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No. 662 


TV. Clark Russell 


50 Cents 


Entered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter. Issued Monthly. Subscription Price per Year, 12 Nos., $5.00. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY 




3 . Nopcl 


t*s.. 


By W. CLARK RUSSELL 

AUTHOR OP 

“ A sailor’s .sweetheart ” “ THE WRECK OF THE ‘ GPOSYENOR ’ ” 
“ THE FROZEN PIRATE ” “ MAROONED ” ETC. 


y’ 





Si.^' 




NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

December, 1889 


Ibarper’s /Iftagasine for 1890. 


W ITH the December Number Harper’s Magazine enters upon its Eightieth 
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Address: HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, N. Y. 


AN OCEAN TRAOEDY 


H movel 


BY ^ 

W. CLAEK EUSSELL 

AUTHOR OF 

“a sailor’s sweetheart” “the wreck of the ‘grosvenor’” 
“the frozen pirate” “marooned” etc. 



NEW YORK 

harper & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

" 1888 



W. CLAKK KUSSELL’S SEA STORIES. 


A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

. A SAILOR’S SWEETHEART. 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

A SEA QUEEN. 16mo, Half Cloth, $1 00 ; 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

A STRANGE VOYAGE. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

A VOYAGE TO THE CAPE. 16mo, Paper, 25 cents. 

•AN OCEAN FREE-LANCE. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

'^AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

AULD LANG SYNE. 4to, Paper, 10 cents. 

, IN THE MIDDLE WATCH. 16mo, Paper, 25 cents. 

. JACK’S COURTSHIP. 16mo, Half Cloth, 75 cents ; 4to, Paper, 25 cents. 

VJOHN HOLDSWORTH, CHIEF MATE. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

LITTLE LOO. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

MAROONED. 8vo, Paper, 25 cents. 

MY WATCH BELOW. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

ON THE FO’K’SLE HEAD. 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

HOUND THE GALLEY-FIRE. 4to, Paper, 15 cents 
THE FROZEN PIRATE. Illustrated. 4to, Paper, 25 cents. 
iTHE GOLDEN HOPE. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

•THE “LADY MAUD.” Illustrated. 41o, Paper, 20 cents. 

THE WRECK OF THE “GROSVENOR.” 8vo, Paper, 30 cts. ; 4to, Paper, 15 cts. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

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of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 




V 


^ I ■ ^ > 


• • % . 


• CONTENTS. 

% 

OHAP. 

I. MY COUSIN 5 

II. THE “bride” 16 

m. LAURA JENNINGS 25 

m ■ ^ 9 r . 

TV. IN THE SOLENT . . . ' 37 

V. LONG-TOM 52 

« 

VI. FINN TESTS THE CREW’S SIGHT 65 

Yii. SAIL, ho! 75 

VIII. WE SPEAK THE “WANDERER” 86 

IX. A SQUALL 97 

X. I GO ALOFT 106 

XI. THE PORTUGUESE BRIG 116 

XII. A SECOND WARNING . • 131 

XIII. I INTERPRET THE WARNING 144 

XIV. MUFFIN GOES FORWARD 156 

XV. I BOARD A WRECK 169 

XVI. WE SIGHT A SCHOONER-YACHT 182 

XVII. WE RAISE THE SCHOONER 193 

XVIII. IS SHE THE “SHARK?” 205 

XIX. A MYSTERIOUS VOICE 219 

XX. MUFFIN IS PUNISHED 231 

XXI. ETEAVY WEATHER 243 

XXII. THE “’LIZA ROBBINS” 253 

XXIII. THE COLONEL AND HER LADYSHIP ......... 263 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP. FAHR 

XXIV. THE DUEL 274 

XXV. THE colonel’s PUNERAIi 287 

XXVI. WILFRID’S DELUSION 302 

XXVII. A DEAD CALM 320 

XXVin. A TERRIBLE NIGHT . . . 334 

XXIX. A VOLCANIC ISLAND 348 

XXX. WE BOARD THE GALLEON 362 

XXXI. THE FIRST NIGHT 375 

XXXII. THE galleon’s HOLD 390 

XXXIII. THE second NIGHT 406 

XXXIV. CONCLUSION 423 


4 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY 


C FI AFTER I. 

MY COUSIN. 

“ Sir Wilfrid Monson, sir,” exclaimed my man. 

It was half-past ten o’clock at night, and I was in my lodging in 
Bury Street, St. James’s, slippers on feet, a pipe of tobacco in my 
hand, seltzer and brandy at my elbow, and on my knees the Sun 
newspaper, the chief evening sheet of the times. 

“ Sir Wilfrid Monson, sir.” 

My cousin ! thought I, starting, and looking round at my man, 
with a fancy in me for a moment that he had got the wrong name. 
“ Show him in.” 

Sir Wilfrid entered in a sort of swift, headlong way, full of nerv- 
ousness and passion, as was to be seen easily enough ; and then he 
came to a dead-stop, with a wild look round the room as if to make 
sure that I was alone, and a frowning stare at my servant, who was 
lingering a moment on the threshold, as though suddenly surprised 
out of his habits of prompt, sleek attendance by a fit of astonishment. 

He stood about six feet high ; he had a slight stoop, and was 
something awkward in arms and legs ; yet you were sensible of the 
indefinable quality of breeding in him the moment your eye took in 
his form and face, uncommon as both were. He was forty-four 
years of age at this time, and looked fifty. His hair was long and 
plentiful, but of an iron-gray, streaked with soft white. He had a 
protruding underlip, and a nose which might have been broken for 
the irregularity of its outline, with unusually high-cut nostrils. His 
eves were large, short-sighted, and gray, luminous and earnest, but 
with a tremulous lid that seemed to put a quivering into their ex- 
pression that was a hint in its way of cunning and mental weakness. 
He had a broad, intellectual forehead, brilliantly white teeth, high 
cheek-bones, a large, heavy chin, rounding into a most delicately 


6 


an ocean trace dv. 


moulded throat. He was a man, indeed, at whom, as a stranger, one 
might catch one’s self staring as at something sufficiently puzzling 
to be well worth resolving. Ill -looking he was not^ and yet one 
seemed to seek in vain for qualities of body or mind to neutralize to 
the sight what was assuredly a combination of much that was un- 
comely, and indeed, in one or two directions, absolutely grotesque. 
But then I had the secret. 

The long and short of it was, my cousin, Sir Wilfrid Monson, was 
not entirely straight - headed. Everything was made clear to the 
mind, after a glance at his strange, weak, yet striking profile, with 
the hint that there had been madness in his mother’s family. He 
was the eighth baronet, and on his father’s side (and that was my 
side, I am thankful to say) all had been sound as a bell ; but my 
uncle had fallen in love with the daughter of a Scotch peer, whose 
family were tainted with insanity ; no matter her real name ; the 
Lady Elizabeth will suffice. He was frankly warned by the old earl, 
who was not too mad to be candid, but the lovesick creature grinned 
in his lordship’s face with a wild shake of the head at the disclosure, 
as though he saw no more in it than a disposition to end the engage- 
ment. Then the honest old madman carried him to a great window 
that overlooked a spacious sweep of lawn, and pointed with a bitter 
smile and a despairful heave of the shoulders to three women walk- 
ing, two of whom were soberly clad in big bonnets and veils down 
their back, while the third, who was between them, and whose arms 
were locked in the others’, glided forward as though her feet travelled 
on clock-work rollers, while she kept her head fixedly bent, her chin 
upon her breast, and her gaze rooted upon the ground ; and as the 
amorous baronet watched — the earl meanwhile preserving his miser- 
able smile as he held his gouty forefinger levelled — he saw the down- 
looking woman make an effort to break away from her companions, 
but without ever lifting her head. 

“ That’s Lady Alice,” said the earl — “ speechless and brainless ! 
Quid preserve us ! And the Lady Elizabeth is her seester.” 

“ Ay, that may be,” answers the other ; “ but take two roses grow- 
ing side by side ; because some venomous worm is eating into the 
heart of one and withering up its beauty, is the other that is radiant 
and flawless to be left uncherished ?” 

“Guid forbid!” answered the earl, and then turned away with a 
weak hech ! hech ! that should have proved more terrifying to one’s 
matrimonial yearnings than even the desolate picture of the three fig- 
ures stalking the emerald-green sward. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


1 


These were dim memories, yet they flashed into my head with 
the swiftness of thought, along with the workings of the eager con- 
jecture and lively wonder raised in me by Wilfrid’s visit, and by his 
peculiar aspect, too, during the few moments’ interval of pause that 
followed his entrance. My servant shut the door ; Wilfrid looked 
to see that it was closed, then approached me with a sort of lifting 
of his face as of a man half choked with a hurry and passion of 
sentences which he wants to be quit of all at once in a breath, stag- 
gering as he moved, his right arm out-stretched with a rapid vibra- 
tion of the hand at the wrist ; and, without delivering himself of a syl- 
lable, he fell into a chair near the table, dashing his hat to the floor, 
buried his face in his arms, and so lay sobbing in respirations of hys- 
teric fierceness. 

This extraordinary behavior amazed and terrified me. I will not 
deny that I at first suspected the madness that lurked as a poison in 
his blood had suddenly obtained a strong hold, and that he had come 
to see me while seized with a heavy fit. I put down ray pipe, and 
adopted a steadier posture, so to speak, in my chair, secretly hoping 
that the surprise his manner or appearance had excited in ray valet 
would render the fellow curious enough to hang about outside to 
listen to what might pass at the start. I kept my eyes fixed upon 
my cousin, but without offering to speak, for whatever might be the 
cause of the agitation that was convulsing his pow^erful form with 
deep sobbing breathings, the emotion was too overwhelming to be 
broken in upon by speech. Presently he looked up, his eyes were 
tearless, but his face was both dusky and haggard with the anguish 
that worked in him. 

“ In the name of Heaven, Wilfrid !” I cried, witnessing intelli- 
gence enough in his gaze to instantly relieve me from the dread 
that had possessed me, “ what is wrong with you ? What has hap- 
pened ?” 

He drew a long, tremulous breath, and essayed to speak, but it 
was unintelligible in the broken syllable or two he managed to utter. 
I poured what sailors term a “ two-finger nip ” of brandy into a 
tumbler, and added a little seltzer- water to the dram. He seized 
the glass with a hand that shook like a drunkard’s and emptied it. 
But the draught steadied him, and a moment after he said, in a low 
voice, while he clasped his hands upon the table with such a grip of 
each other that the veins stood out like whip-cord, “ My wife has 
left me !” 

I stared at him stupidly. The disclosure was so unexpected, so 


8 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


wildly remote from any conclusion my fears had arrived at, that I 
could only look at him like a fool. 

“ Left you !” I faltered ; “ what d’ye mean, Wilfrid ? Refused to 
live with you ?” 

“ No !” he exclaimed, with a face darkening yet to the effort it 
cost him to subdue his voice. “ She has eloped — left me — left her 
baby for — for — ” He stopped, bringing his fist to the table with a 
crash that was like to have demolished everything upon it. 

“ It is an abominable business,” said I, soothingly ; “ but it is not 
to be bettered by letting feeling overmaster you. Come, take your 
time; give yourself a chance. You are here, of course, to tell me 
the story ; let me have it quietly. It is but to let yourself be torn 
to pieces to suffer your passion to jockey your reason.” 

“She has left me!” he shrieked, rising bolt -upright from his 
chair, and lifting his arms, with his hands clinched, to the ceiling. 
“ Devil and beast ! faithless mother ! faithless wife ! May God — ” 

I raised my hand, looking him full in the face. “ Pray, sit, Wil- 
frid. Lady Monson has left you, you say. With or for whom ?” 

“ Hope-Kennedy,” he answered, “ Colonel Hope-Kennedy,” bring- 
ing out the words as though they were rooted in his throat. “My 
good friend Hope-Kennedy, Charles; the man I have entertained, 
have hunted with, assisted at a time when help was precious to him. 
Ay, Colonel Hope-Kennedy. That is the man she has left me for — 
the fellow that she has abandoned her baby for. It is a dream — it 
is a dream ! I loved her so ! I could have kissed her breast, where 
her heart lay, as a Bible, for truth, sincerity, and all beautiful 
thought.” 

He passed his hand over his forehead and seated himself again, or 
rather dropped into his chair, resting his chin upon the palm of his 
hand, with the nails of his fingers at his teeth, while he watched me 
with a gaze that was rendered indescribably pathetic by the soft, 
near-sighted look of his gray eyes under the shadow of his forehead, 
that had a wrinkled, twisted, even distorted aspect with the pain his 
soul was in. There was but one way of giving him relief, and that 
was by plying him with questions to enable him to let loose his 
thoughts. He extended his hand for the brandy, and mixed himself 
a bumper. There was little in spirits to hurt him at such a time as 
this. Indeed, I believe he could have carried a whole bottle in his 
head without exhibiting himself as in the least degree oversparred. 
This second dose distinctly rallied him, and now he lay back in his 
chair, with his arms folded upon his breast. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


9 


“ When did your wife leave you, Wilfrid ?” 

“ A week to-day.” 

“You know, without doubt, that Hope-Kennedy is the man she 
has gone off with ?” 

He nodded savagely, with a smile like a scowl passing over his 
face. 

“ But how do you know for certain ?” I cried, determined to make 
him talk. 

He pulled a number of letters from his side-pocket, overhauled 
them, found one, glanced at it, and handed it to me with a posture 
of the arm that might have made one think it was some venomous 
snake he held. 

“ This was found in my wife’s bedroom,” said he ; “ read it to 
yourself. Every line of it seems to be written in fire here.” He 
struck his breast with his fist. 

What I am telling happened a long time ago, as you will notice 
presently. The letter my cousin handed to me I read once and never 
saw again, and so, as you may suppose, I am unable to give it as it 
was written ; but the substance of it was this : it was addressed to 
Lady Monson. The writer called her, I recollect, my darling, my 
adorable Henrietta. It was all about the proposed elopement, a 
complete sketch of the plan of it, and the one document Sir Wilfrid 
could have prayed to get hold of, had he any desire to know what 
had become of his wife, and on what kind of rambles she and her 
paramour had started. The letter was signed, boldly enough, “ Frank 
Hope-Kennedy,” and was filled with careful instructions to her how 
and when to leave her house. Railroads were few and far between 
in those days. Sir Wilfrid Monson’s estate was in Cumberland, and 
it was a long journey by coach and chaise to the town that was con- 
nected with the metropolis by steam. But the colonel had made 
every arrangement for her ladyship, and it was apparent from his 
instructions that she had managed her flight first by driving to an 
adjacent village, where she dismissed the carriage, with orders for it 
to return for her at such and such an hour ; then, when her coach- 
man was out of sight, she entered a post-chaise that was in readiness, 
and galloped along to a town through which the stage-coach passed. 
By tins coach she would travel some twenty or thirty miles, then 
post it to the terminus of the line that conveyed her to London. 
But all this, though it ran into a tedious bit of description, was but 
a part of the gallant colonel’s programme. Her ladyship would ar- 
rive in London at such and such an hour, and the colonel would be 


10 


AX ocEax tragedy. 


waiting at the station to receive her. They would then drive to a 
hotel out of Bond Street, and next morning proceed to Southamp- 
ton, where the Shark lay ready for them. It was manifest that 
Colonel Hope-Kennedy intended to sail away with Lady Monson in 
a vessel named the Shark. He devoted a page of small writing to 
a description of this craft, which, I might take it — though not much 
in that way was to be gathered from a landsman’s statement — was 
a large schooner-yacht owned by Lord Winterton, from whom the 
colonel had apparently hired it for an indefinite period. He assured 
his adorable Henrietta that he had spared neither money nor pains 
to render the vessel as luxurious in cuisine^ cabin fittings, and the 
like as was practicable in a sea-going fabric in those days. He added 
that what his darling required for the voyage must be hastily pur- 
chased at Southampton. She must be satisfied with a very slender 
wardrobe ; time was pressing ; the madman to whom the clergyman 
who married them had shackled her would bo ofiE in wild pursuit, 
helter-skelter, flying moonward, mayhap, in his delirium on the in- 
stant of discovering that she was gone. Time, therefore, pressed, 
and when once the anchor of the Shark was lifted off the ground, 
he had no intention of letting it fall again until they had measured 
six thousand miles of salt-water. 

I delivered a prolonged whistle on reading this. Six thousand 
miles of ocean, methought, sounded intolerably real as a condition 
of an elopement. My cousin never removed his eyes from my face 
while I read. I gave him the letter, which he folded and returned 
to his pocket. He was now looking somewhat collected, though the 
surging of the passion and grief in him would show in a momentary 
sparkle of the eye, in a spasmodic grin and twist of the lips, in a 
quick clinching of his hands as though he would drive his finger- 
nails into his palms. I hardly knew what to say, for the letter was 
as full a revelation of the vile story as he could have given me in an 
hour’s delivery, and the injury and misery of the thing were too re- 
cent to admit of soothing words ; yet I guessed that it would do 
him good to talk. 

“ Have they sailed yet ?” I inquired. 

“Yes,” he answered, letting out his breath in a sigh, as though 
some thought in him had arrested his respiration for a bit. 

“How do you know?” 

“ I arrived an hour ago from Southampton,” he replied, “and have 
got all the information I require.” 

“There cannot be much to add to what the letter contains,” said 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


11 


I ; “it is the completest imaginable story of the devilish busi- 
ness.” 

He looked at me oddly, and then said, “Ay, it tells what has 
happened, but that did not satisfy me ; I have gone beyond that, 
and know the place they are making for.” 

“ It will be six thousand miles distant, anyhow,” said I. 

“ Quite. The villain reasoned with a pair of compasses in his 
hand. It is Cape Town — the other side of the world. When ’tis 
ice and northern blasts with us, it is the fragrance of the moon-lily 
and a warm heaven of quiet stars with them.” 

He struck the table, smothering some wild curse or other behind 
his set teeth, next leaped from his chair, and fell to pacing the 
room, now and again muttering to himself, with an occasional flour- 
ish of his arm. I watched him in silence. Presently he returned 
to the table and mixed another glass of liquor. He sat lost in 
thought for a little ; then, with a slow lifting of his eyes, till his gaze 
lay steadfast on me, he said, “ Charley, I am going to follow them 
to Cape Town.” 

“ In some South African trader ?” 

“ In my yacht. You know her?” 

“ I have never seen her, but I have heard of her as a very fine 
vessel.” 

“ She sails two feet to the Shark's one,” he exclaimed, with a 
queer gleam of satisfaction glistening in the earnest stare he kept 
fastened on me. “ I gave her square yards last year ; you will know 
what a great hoist of top-sail, and a big square-sail under it, and a 
large top-gallant sail should do for such a model as the Bride. The 
Shark is fore and aft only.” He fetched his leg a smack that sound- 
ed like the report of a pistol. “ We’ll have ’em !” he exclaimed, 
and his face turned pale as he spoke the words. 

“ Let me understand,” said I ; “ you propose to sail in pursuit of 
the colonel and your wife ?” 1 

He nodded, while he clasped his hands upon the table and leaned 
forward. 

“ What proof have you that they have started for Cape Town ?” 

He instantly answered : “ The captain of the Shark is a man 
named Fidler; my captain’s name is Finn. His wife and Mrs. Fid- 
ler are neighbors at Southampton, and good friends. Mrs. Fidler 
told my captain’s wife that her husband was superintending the 
equipment of Lord Winterton’s yacht for a voyage round the world, 
and that the first port of call would be Table Bay. She knew that 


12 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


the Shark had been let by Winterton to a gentleman, but at the time 
of her speaking to Mrs. Finn she did not know his name.” 

“You said just now,” I exclaimed, “ that you had assisted this 
fellow Hope-Kennedy when help was precious to him. I suppose 
you mean that you lent him money ? How can he support the ex- 
pense of a yacht, for, if I remember rightly, the Shark's burden is 
over two hundred tons ?” 

“ I lent him money before I was married ; within the last three 
years he has come into a fortune of between eighty and a hundred 
thousand pounds.” 

I paused a moment, and then said, “ Have you thoroughly con- 
sidered this project of chasing the fugitives ?” 

His eyes brightened to a sudden rage, but he checked the utter- 
ance of what rose to his lips, and said, with a violent effort to sub- 
due himself, “ I start the day after to-morrow.” 

“Alone?” 

“ No, my sister-in-law will accompany me ;” then, after a breath 
or two, “ and you." 

“ I ?” 

“ Oh,” he cried, “ it would be ridiculous in me to expect you to 
say at once that you will come, but before I leave this room I shall 
have your promise.” And as he said this he stretched his arms 
across the table and took my hand in both his and fondled it, mean- 
while eying me in the most passionate, wistful manner that can be 
imagined. 

“ Wilfrid,” said I, softly, touched by his air and a sort of beauty, 
as I seemed to think, that came into his strange face with the plead- 
ing of it, “ whatever I can do that may be serviceable to you in 
this time of bitter trial, I will do. But let me reason with you a 
little.” 

“Ay, reason,” he responded, relinquishing my hand and folding 
his arms and leaning back in his chair. 

“ I have been a sailor in my time, as you know,” said I, “ and 
have some acquaintance with the sea, even though my experience 
goes no further than a brief spell of East African and West Indian 
stations, and therefore forgive me for inquiring your expectations. 
What do you suppose? The Shark will have had three days’ start 
of you.” 

“ Five days !” he. interrupted. 

“ Five days, then. Do you expect to overhaul her at sea, or is it 
your intention to crowd on to the Cape, await her arrival there; or, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


13 


if 3’ou find she has already sailed, to follow her to the next port, 
providing you can learn it?” 

“ You have named the programme,” he answered ; “ I shall chase 
her. If I miss her, I shall wait for her at Table Bay.” 

“ She may get there before you,” I said, “and be under way for 
another destination while you are still miles to the nor’ard.” 

“ No,” he cried, hotly ; “ we shall be there first. But we shall not 
need to go so far. Her course must be our course, and we shall 
overhaul her ; don’t doubt that.” 

“ But put it,” said I, “ first of all, that you donH overhaul her. 
You may pass her close on a dark night with never a guess at her 
presence. She may be within twenty miles of you on a clear, bright 
day, and not a creature on board suspect that a shift of helm, by 
so much as half a point, would bring what all hands are dying to 
overhaul within eyeshot in half an hour.” 

He listened with a face clouded and frowning with impatience; 
but I was resolved to weaken, if I could, what seemed an insane 
resolution. 

“ Count upon missing her at sea, for I tell you the chances of 
your picking her up are all against you. Well, now, you arrive at 
Table Bay, and find that the Shark sailed a day or two before for 
some port of which nobody knows anything. What will you do 
then? How will you steer your Bride? For all you can tell, this 
man Hope-Kennedy may make for the Pacific Islands, by way of 
Cape Horn, or he may head north-east for the Mozambique and the 
Indian waters, or south-east for the Australias. It is but to let fly 
an arrow in the dark to embark on such a quest.” 

He lay back, looking at me a little without speaking, and then 
said, in a more collected manner than his face might promise : “ I 
may miss this man upon the high-seas; I may find his yacht has 
arrived and gone again when I reach Table Bay ; and I may not 
know, as you say, in what direction to seek her, if there be no one 
in Cape Town able to tell me what port she has started for ; but” — 
he drew a deep breath— “ the pursuit gives me a chance. You will 
admit that?” 

“Yes, a chance, as you say.” 

“A chance,” he continued, “that need not keep me waiting long 
for it to happen. D’ye think I could rest with the knowledge that 
that scoundrel and the woman he has rendered faithless to me are 
close yonder?” he exclaimed, pointing, as though there had come a 
vision of the Atlantic before his mind’s eye and he saw the yacht 


14 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


afloat upon it. “ Who’s to tell me that before the month is out our 
friend the colonel will not be drifting fathoms deep, with a shot 
through his heart?” 

“ If you catch him you will shoot him?” 

“ Oh yes.” 

“ And Lady Monson ?” 

He looked down without answering. 

“ I am a single man,” said I, “ and am, therefore, no doubt dis- 
qualifled from passing an opinion, but I vow to Heaven, Wilfrid, 
if my wife chose to leave me for another man, I would not lift a 
finger either to regain her or to avenge myself. A divorce would 
fully appease me. Who would not feel gay to be rid of a woman 
whose every heart-throb is a dishonor ? What more unendurable 
than an association rendered an incomparable insult, and the basest 
lie under heaven, by one’s wife’s secret abhorrence, and her desire 
for another?” 

On a sudden he sprang to his feet, as though stabbed. “ Cease, 
for Christ’s sake !” he shouted. “ The more truthful your words are, 
the more they madden me. If I could tear her from me,” clutching 
at his breast in a wild, tragical way ; “ if I could cleanse my heart 
of her, as you would purify a vessel of what has lain foul and poi- 
sonous in it; if disgust would but fall cool on my resentment and 
leave me loathing her merely ; if — if — if ! But it is if that makes 
the difference between hell and heaven in this bad world of unex- 
pected things.” He sat afresh, passing the back of his hand over 
his brow, and sighing heavily. “There is no if for me,” said he. 
“ I love her passionately yet, and so hate her besides that — ” He 
checked himself with a shake of the head. “No, no; perhaps not 
when it came to it,” he muttered, as though thinking aloud. “ We 
are wasting time,” he cried, pulling out his watch. “Charley, you 
will accompany me?” 

“ But you start the day after to-morrow ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ From Southampton ?” 

“Yes.” 

“And should you find the Shark gone when you arrive at the 
Cape—” 

“ Well?” 

“Ay,” said I, “that’s just it. W^e should be like Adam and Eve, 
with all the world before us where to choose.” 

♦‘Charley, will you come? I counted upon you from the mo- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


15 


rnent of forming my resolution. You have been a sailor. You are 
the one man of them all that I should turn to in such a time as 
this. Say you will come. Laura Jennings, my wife’s — my — my 
sister-in-law, I mean — will accompany us. Did I tell you this? 
Yes ; I recollect. She is a stout-hearted little woman, as brave as 
she is beautiful, and so shocked, so shocked !” He clasped his 
hands upon his brow, lifting his eyes. “ She would pass through a 
furnace to rescue her sister from this infamy. Come !” 

“ You give me no time.” 

“Time! You have all to-morrow. You may easily be on board 
by four o’clock in the afternoon on the following day. Time ! A 
sailor knows nothing of time. I must have you by my side, Char- 
ley. We shall meet them, and I shall need a friend. The support 
and help of your company, too — ” 

“ Will your yacht be ready for sea by the day after to-morrow ?” 

“ She is ready now.” 

“Your people have worked expeditiously,” said I, fencing a little, 
for he was leaning towards me and devouring me with his eyes, and 
I found it impossible to say yes or no right off. 

“ Will you come ?” 

“ How many form your party ?” 

“ There is myself, there is Laura, then you, then a niaid for my 
sister-in-law, and my man, and yours, if you choose to bring him.” 

“ In short, there will be three of us,” said I ; “no doctor?” 

■ “We cannot be too few. What would be the good of a doctor? 
Will you come?” 

“Do you sleep in town to-night?” 

“Yes,” he replied, naming a hotel near Charing Cross. 

“Well, then, Wilfrid,” said I, “you must give me to-night to 
think the thing over. What are your plans for to-morrow ?” 

“I leave for Southampton at ten. Laura arrives there at six in 
the evening.” 

“ Then,” said I, “ you shall have my answer by nine o’clock to- 
morrow. Will that do?” 

“It must do, I suppose,” said he, wearily, moving as if to rise, 
and casting a dull, absent sort of look at his watch. 

A quarter of an hour later I was alone. 


16 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE “bride.” 

Time was when I had been much thrown with my cousin. I had 
served in the Royal Navy for a few years, as I have said, but aban- 
doned it on my inheriting a very comfortable little fortune from 
my father, who survived my mother a few months only. I say I 
quitted the sea then, partly because I was now become an indepen- 
dent man, partly because I was comparatively without influence, and 
so found the vocation unpromising, and partly because my frizzling 
equatorial spells of service had fairly sickened me of the life. 

It was then that Wilfrid, who was a bachelor, and my senior by 
some ten years or thereabouts, invited me down to Cumberland, 
where I hunted and shot with him and passed some merry weeks. 
He took a great liking to me, and I was often with him, and we- 
were much together in London. There came a time, however, when 
he took it into his head to travel. He thought he would go abroad 
and see the world ; not Paris, Brussels, and Rome, but America and 
the Indies and Australia — a considerable undertaking in those am- 
bling days of the tea-wagon and the cotton kettle-bottom, when the 
passage from the Thames to Bombay occupied four months, and 
when a man who had made a voyage around the world believed he 
had a right to give himself airs. 

Well, my cousin sailed ; I went down to Gravesend with him 
and bade him good-bye there. His first start was for New York, 
and then he talked of proceeding to the West Indies and afterwards 
to the Cape, thence to India or Australia, and so on. He was away 
so long that the very memory of him grew dim in me, till one day 
I heard some men in a club that I belonged to speaking about the 
beautiful Lady Monson. I pricked up my ears at this, for Monson 
is my name, and the word caught me instantly, and, gathering that 
one of the group, a young baronet with whom I was well acquainted, 
could satisfy my curiosity about the lady, I waited till he was alone 
and then questioned him. 

He said that Lady Monson was my cousin’s wife ; Sir Wilfrid 
had met her at Melbourne, and married her there, She was the 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


17 


daughter of a squatter, a man of small beginnings, who had done 
amazingly well. She was exceedingly beautiful, my young friend 
assured me. He had met her twice at county balls, and had never 
seen her like for dignity, grace, and loveliness of form and face. 
He told me that she was very fond of the sea, so some friends or 
acquaintances of hers had informed him, and that to gratify her 
taste in this way Sir Wilfrid sold his cutter — a vessel of twenty tons, 
aboard which I had made one or two excursions with him — and 
replaced her by a handsome schooner which he had rechristened the 
Bride. I understood from the young baronet that my cousin and 
his wife were then away cruising in the Mediterranean. 

I had not before heard of Wilfrid’s marriage, and, though for the 
moment I was a little surprised and perhaps vexed that he had 
never communicated so interesting a piece of news as this to me, 
who, as a blood relation and an intimate friend, had a claim upon 
his candor and kindness, yet on reflection I judged that his memory 
had been weakened by separation as mine had ; and then I consid- 
ered that he was so much engrossed by his wife as to be able to 
think of little besides, while, though he had then been married many 
months, he had apparently spent with Lady Monson a good deal of 
his time out of England. 

About six weeks before the opening of this story I met him in 
Bond Street. I was passing him, for time and travel had wonder- 
fully changed him, and in his long hair and smooth face I must 
certainly have failed, in the hurry of the pavement, to have recog- 
nized the cropped and bewhiskered young fellow whom I had taken 
leave of at Gravesend, but for his starting, and his peculiar way 
of peering at me. My rooms were conveniently near. I carried 
him to them, and a couple of hours passed while he told me of his 
adventures. I noticed that he said much less about his wife than I 
should have expected to hear from him. He referred to her, in- 
deed ; praised her beauty, her accomplishments, with an almost pas- 
sionate admiration in his way ofc speaking, yet I remarked a sort of 
uneasiness in his face, too, a kind of shadowing, as though the hav- 
ing to speak of his wife raised thoughts which eclipsed or dimmed 
the brightness of the holiday memories he was full of. Still I was 
so little sure that when I came to think it over I was convinced it 
was mere fancy on my part, or at the worst I took it that, though 
he was worth ten thousand a year, she might be making him uneasy 
by extravagance, or there might have been a tiff between them be- 
fore leaving his home to come to London, the memory of which 
2 


18 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


would worry a man of his temperament — a creature of nerves, and 
tainted besides, as you know. He told me he was in London for a 
couple of days on a matter of business, and that he had asked Lady 
Monson to accompany him ; but she had said it vexed her to leave 
her baby for even a day, and that it was out of the question to sub- 
ject the bairn to the jolting, risks, and fatigue of a long journey. 
He looked curiously as he said this, but the expression fled too nim- 
bly from his face to be determinable. 

What was I doing ? When would it suit me to visit him ? If I 
had no better engagement, would I return with him? But, though 
I had missed nothing of the old cordiality in his greeting, and in his 
conversation, that had reference to our by-gone jinks and to his trav- 
els, his invitation — if invitation it could be called — was lifeless. So 
much so, indeed, that it was as good or bad as his telling me he did 
not want me then^ however welcome I might be by-and-by. We 
parted, and I did not see or hear of him again until he came, as I 
have related, to tell me that his wife had eloped with Colonel Hope- 
Kennedy. 

I had now to decide how to act, and I was never more puzzled or 
irresolute in the whole course of my life. Had he proposed an ocean 
cruise as a mere yachting trip, I should have accepted the offer right 
out of hand. 

The sea, as a vocation, I did not love ; but very different from the 
discipline of a man-of-war’s quarter-deck, and the fever-breeding te- 
dium of stagnant and broiling stations, was the business of navigat- 
ing the blue brine in a large, richly equipped yacht, of chasing the 
sun as one chose, of storing one’s mind with memories of the glit- 
tering pageantry of noble and shining rivers, and green and spar- 
kling scenes of country radiant and aromatic with the vegetation of 
tropic heights, and distant seaboard cities passed, the gleam of the 
coral strand with a scent of sandal-wood in the off-shore breeze, and 
boats of strange form and rig, gay as aquatic parrots, sliding along 
the turquoise surface to the strains ^f a chant as Asiatic as the smell 
of the hubble-bubble. No man ever loved travel more than I ; only, 
unfortunately, in my time, when I had the right sort of health and 
spirit for adventure, journeys by land and by sea were tedious and 
fatiguing. Very few steamers were afloat; one might have sought 
in vain for a propeller to thrash one to the world’s end with the 
velocity of a gale of wind. I had often a mind, after Wilfrid had 
started on his voyage to various parts of the world, to follow his ex- 
ample ; but I would shake my head when I came to think of the 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


19 


passenger ship, the chance of being locked up for months with a 
score or two of people, half of whom might prove disagreeable, not 
to mention indifferent food and a vile ship’s cook, with weeks of 
equatorial deadness, and everything to be gone through again as one 
went from place to place by sea, and myself corapanionless the 
while. 

But a yachting cruise was another matter, and I say I should have 
accepted Wilfrid’s proposal without an instant’s reflection, even if I 
had had to be on board by noon next day, but for the extraordinary 
motive of the trip. It was very plain that he had no clear percep- 
tion of his own programme. He talked as though everything that 
happened would correspond with his anticipations. He seemed cock- 
sure, for instance, of overhauling the Shark in mid-ocean, when in 
reality the possibility of such an encounter was so infinitesimally 
small that no man in his senses would dream of seriously entering it 
as an item in his catalogue of chances. Then, supposing him to miss 
the Sharks he was equally cocksure of arriving at Table Bay before 
her. The Bride might be the swifter vessel, but the course was six 
thousand miles and more ; the run might occupy two, and perhaps 
three, ay, and even four months ; and, though I did not make much 
of the Shark's five days’ start, yet, even if the Bride out-sailed her 
by four feet to one, so much of the unexpected must enter as con- 
ditions of so long a run and so great a period of time — calms, head- 
winds, disaster, strong, favorable breezes for the chased, sneaking 
and baffling draughts of air for the pursuer — that it was mere mad- 
ness to reckon with confidence upon the Bride's arrival at Cape 
Town before the Shark. So that, as there was no certainty at all 
about it, what was to follow if my cousin found that the runaways 
had sailed from Cape Town without leaving the faintest hint behind 
them as to their destination ? 

Moreover, how could one be sure that the colonel and Lady Mon- 
son would not change their minds, and make for American or Medi- 
terranean ports? Their determination to put the whole world be- 
tween them and England was not very intelligible, seeing that our 
globe is a big one, and that scoundrels need not travel far to be lost 
to the eye. If Lady Monson discovered that she had left behind 
her the remarkable letter which Wilfrid had given to me to read, 
then it would be strange if she and the colonel did not change their 
programme, unless, indeed, they supposed* that Wilfrid would never 
dream of following them upon the high-seas. 

But these were idle speculations ; they made no part of my busi- 


20 


AX OCEAX TRAGEDY. 


ness. Should I accompany my cousin on as mad an undertaking as 
ever passion and distraction could hurry him into? I was heartily 
grieved for the poor fellow, and I sincerely desired to be of use to 
him. It might be that after we had been chasing for a few weeks 
his heart would sicken to the sight hour after hour of the bare sea- 
line, and then, perhaps, if I were with him, I might come to have 
influence enough over his moods to divert him from his resolution, 
and so steer us home again ; for I would think to myself, grant that 
we fall in with the Shark, what can Wilfrid do? Would he arm 
his men and board her? Yachtsmen are a peaceful body of sea- 
farers, and before it could come to a boarding match and a hand- 
to-hand fight, he would have to satisfy his crew that they had signed 
articles to sell their lives as well as work his ship. To be sure, if the 
yachts fell within hail, and Sir Wilfrid challenged the colonel, the 
latter would not, it may be supposed, decline the duel. 

But, view the proposal as I might, I could see nothing but a mad 
scheme in it ; and I think it must have been two o’clock in the morn- 
ing before I had made up my mind, so heartily did I bother myself 
with considerations; and then, after reflecting that there was noth- 
ing to keep me in England, that my cousin had come to me as a 
brother, and asked me in a sense to stand by him as a brother ; that 
the state of his mind imposed it almost as a pious obligation upon 
me to be by his side in this time of extremity and bitter anguish ; 
that the quest was practically so aimless — the excursion was al- 
most certain to end on this side the Cape, or, to put it at the worst, 
to end at Table Bay, which, after all, would prove no formidable 
cruise, but, on the contrary, a trip that must do me good, and kill 
the autumn months very pleasantly — I say that, after lengthily re- 
flecting on these and many other points and possibilities of the proj- 
ect, I made up my mind that I would sail with him. 

Next morning I despatched my man with a note — a brief sen- 
tence: I will he on^hoard to-morrow hy four,"" and received Wil- 
frid’s reply, writte^in an agitated, sprawling hand : “ God bless you! 
Your decision mams^ a double-barrelled weapon of my purpose. I 
have not slept a wink all night — my fifth night of sleeplessness ; but 
I shall feel easier when the clipper keel of the Bride is shearing 
through it in hot and sure pursuit. I start in a quarter of an hour 
for Southampton. Laura will be overjoyed to hear that you are to 
be one ofus; from the moment of my determining to follow that hell- 
born rascal she has been exhorting me to choose a companion — of my 
own sex, I mean, but it would have to be you or nix. My good 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


21 


(tngel he praised^ Uis all right now ! We'll have 'em, we'll have 'em! 
Mark me ! Would to Heaven the pistol-hall had the power to cause 
in the heart of a seducer the intolerable mental torm&nts he works for 
another ere it fulfilled its mission hy killing him!" He signed him- 
self, “ Yours ever affectionately." 

Wild as the tone of this note was, it was less suggestive of excite- 
ment and passion and restlessness than the writing. I locked it 
away and possess it still, and no memorial that I can put my hand 
on has its power of lighting up the past. I never look at it with- 
out living again in the veritable atmosphere and color and emotions 
of the long-vanished days. 

Being a bachelor, my few affairs which needed attention were 
speedily put in order. My requirements in regard to apparel for a 
voyage to the Cape I exactly knew, and supplied them in three or 
four hours. The railroad to Southampton had been opened some 
months, so I should be spared a long and tiresome journey by coach. 
By ten o’clock that night I was ready, bag arid baggage — a credita- 
ble performance in a man who for some years had been used to a 
lounging, inactive life. I offered to take my servant, but he told 
me he was a bad sailor, and afraid of the water, and was without 
curiosity to view foreign parts ; so I paid and discharged him, not 
doubting that I should be able to manage very well without a man ; 
and leaving what property I could not carry with me in charge of 
ray landlord, I next morning took my departure for Southampton. 

I believe I did not in the least degree realize the nature of the 
queer adventure I had consented to embark on until I found myself 
in a wherry heading in the direction of a large schooner-yacht that 
lay a mile away out upon Southampton water. She was the Bride, 
the boatman told me, and the handsomest vessel of her kind that he 
knew. 

“ A finer craft than the Shark ?" said I. 

“ Whoy, yes,” he answered ; “ bigger by fourteen or fifteen ton, 
but Oi dunno about foiner. The Shark has the sweeter lines, Oi 
allow ; but that there Bride," said he, with a toss of his head in the 
direction of the yacht, sitting with his back upon her as h-e was, 
“has got the ocean-going qualities of a line-of-battle ship.” 

“Take a race between them,” said I, “which would prove the 
better ship ?” 

“ Whoy, in loight airs the Shark, Oi dare say, ’ud creep ahead. 
In ratching, too, in small winds she’d go to wind’ard of t’other as 
though she was warping that way. But in anything loike a stiff 


2-2 


an ocean tkdagey. 


breeze yonder Bride ’ud fore-reach upon and vveatlier the Shark as 
easy as swallowing a pint o’ yale, or my name’s Noah, which it 
ain’t.” 

“ The Shark has sailed ?” 

“ Oy, last week.” 

“ Where bound to, d’ye know ?” 

“ Can’t say, Oi’m sure. Oi’ve heerd she was hired by an army 
gent, and that, wherever his cruise may carry him to, he ain’t going 
to be in a hurry to finish it.” 

“Does he sail alone? Or perhaps he takes his wife or children 
with him ?” 

“ Well,” said the waterman, pausing on his oars a minute or so 
with a grin, while his damp, oyster-like eyes met in a kind of squint 
on my face, “ the night afore the Shark sailed Oi fell in with one 
of her crew, a chap named Bobby Watt; and on my asking him if 
this here military gent was a-going to make the voyage alone, he 
shuts one eye, and says : ‘ Jim,’ he says — Jim being one of my 
names, not Noah — ‘ Jim,’ says he, ‘ when soldiers go to sea,’ says he, 

‘ do they take pairosols with ’em ? and are bonnet- boxes to be found 
’mongst their luggage? Tell ye what it is, Jim,’ he says, ‘they may 
call yachting an innocent divarsion, but bet your life, Jim,’ says he, 

‘ tain’t all as moral as it looks ;’ by which Oi understood,” said the 
waterman, falling to his oars again, “that the military gent hain’t 
sailed alone in the Shark, nor took his wife with him neither, if so 
be he’s a wedded man.” 

We were now rapidly approaching the Bride, and as there was 
little to be learned from the waterman I ceased to question him, 
while I inspected the yacht as a fabric that was to make me a home 
for I knew not how long. Then it was, perhaps, that the full per- 
ception of my undertaking, and of my cousin’s undertaking, too, for 
the matter of that, broke in upon me with the picture of the fine 
vessel straining lightly at her cable, while past her ran the liquid 
slope into airy distance, where, in the delicate blue blending of azure 
radiance fioating down and mingling with the dim cerulean light 
lifting off the face of the quiet waters, you witnessed a faint vision 
of dashes of pale green and gleaming foreshore, with blobs and films 
of land beyond, swimming, as it seemed, in the autumn haze and 
distorted by refraction. It was the Isle of Wight, and the shore 
on either hand went yawning to it till it looked a day’s sail away ; 
and I suppose it was the sense of distance that came to me with 
the scene of the horizon past the yacht, touched with hues illusive 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


2S 

Gtiough to look rettiote, that rendered realization of Wilfrid’s wild 
programme sharp in me as I directed a critical gaze at the beautiful 
fabric we were nearing. 

And beautiful she was — such a gallant toy as an impassioned 
sweetheart would love to present to the woman he adored. In those 
days the memory of the superb Baltimore clippers, and of the 
moulded perfections of the schooners which traded to the Western 
Islands and to the Mediterranean for the season’s fruits, was still a 
vital inspiration among the shipwrights and yacht-builders of the 
country. I had never before seen the Bride^ but I had no sooner 
obtained a fair view of her, first broadside on, then stern wise, as my 
boatman made for the starboard gangway, than I fell in love with 
her. She had the beam and scantling of a revenue-cutter, with high 
bulwarks and an elliptical stern, and a bow with the sheer of a 
smack, but elegant beyond expression with its dominating flare at 
the catheads, where it fell sharpening to a knife-like cut- water, thence 
rounding amidships with just enough swell of the sides to delight a 
sailor’s eye. 

The merest landsman must instantly have recognized in her the 
fabric and body of a sea-going craft of the true pattern. This was 
delightful to observe. The voyage might prove a long one, with 
many passages of storm in it, and the prospect of traversing the 
great oceans of the world; and one would naturally want to make 
sure in one’s floating home of every quality of stanchness and sta- 
bility. A vessel, however, of over two hundred tons burden in those 
times was no mean ship. Crafts of the Bridds dimensions were 
regularly trading as cargo and passenger boats to foreign parts, so 
that little in my day would have been made of any number of voy- 
ages round the world in such a structure as Sir Wilfrid’s yacht. It 
is different now. Our ideas have enlarged with the growth of the 
huge mail-boat, and r. voyage in a yacht driven by steam, and of a 
burden considerably in excess of many West Indiaraen which half 
a century ago were regarded as fine large ships, is considered a per- 
formance remarkable enough to justify the publication of a book 
about it, no matter how destitute of interest and incident the trip 
may have proved. The fashion of the age favored gilt, and forward 
and about her quarters and stern the Bride floated upon the smooth 
waters- all ablaze with the glory of the westering sun striking upon 
the embellishments of golden devices writhing to the shining form 
of the semi -nude beauty that, with arms clasped Madonna- wise, 
sought with an incomparable air of coyness to conceal the graces of 


24 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


her form under the powerful projecting spar of the bowsprit; while 
aft, the gilt -work, in scrolls, flowers, and the like, with a central 
wreath as a frame for the virgin-white letters of the yacht’s name, 
smote the satin surface under the counter with the sheen of a sun- 
beam. All this brightness and richness was increased by her sheath- 
ing of new copper, that rose high upon the glossy bends, and sank 
with ruddy clearness under the water, where it flickered like a light 
there, preserving yet, even in its tremulous waning, something of the 
fair proportions of the submerged parts. 

The bulwarks were so tall that it was not until I was close aboard 
I could distinguish signs of life on the yacht. I then spied a head 
over the rail aft watching me, and on a sudden there sprang up 
alongside of it a white parasol edged with black, and the gleam, as 
it looked, of a fair girlish face in the pearly twilight of the white 
shelter. Then, as I drew close, the man’s head uprose, and I distin- 
guished the odd physiognomy of my cousin under a large straw hat. 
He saluted me with a gloomy gesture of the hand, with something, 
moreover, in his posture to suggest that he was apprehensive of 
being observed by people aboard adjacent vessels, though I would 
not swear at this distance of time that there was anything lying 
nearer to us than half a mile. You would have thought some one 
of consequence had died on board, all was so quiet. I lifted my hat 
solemnly in response to Wilfrid’s melancholy flourish, as though I 
was visiting the craft to attend a funeral. The boat then sheered 
alongside, and paying the waterman his charges, I stepped up the 
short ladder and jumped on deck. 


AN OCEAN TllAGEBi^. 


25 


CHAPTER III. 

LAURA JENNINGS. 

Sir Wilfrid was coming to the gangway as I entered, leaving his 
companion, whom I at once understood to be Miss Laura Jennings, 
standing near the wheel. He grasped my hand, gazing at me ear- 
nestly a moment or two without speaking, and then exclaimed, in a 
low, faltering voice, “You are the dearest fellow to come ! Indeed, 
it is good, true, and noble of you.” 

He then turned to a man dressed in a suit of pilot-cloth, with 
brass buttons on his waistcoat, and a round hat of old sailor fashion 
on his head, who stood at a respectful distance looking on, and mo- 
tioned to him. He approached. 

“ Charles, this is Captain Finn, the master of the yacht. My cous- 
in, Mr. Monson.” 

Finn lifted his hat, with a short scrape of his right leg abaft. 

“ Glad to see you aboard, sir ; glad to see you aboard,” said he, 
in a leather-lunged note that one felt he had difficulty in subduing. 
“A melancholy errand, Mr. Monson, sir; God deliver us ! But we’re 
jockeying a real sweetheart, your honor, and if we ain’t soon stick- 
ing tight to Captain Fidler’s skirts I don’t think it’ll be for not 
being able to guess his course.” 

He shook his head and sighed. But there lay a jolly expression 
in his large, protruding, lobster-like eye, that twinkled there like the 
flame of a taper — enough of it to make me suspect that his mute- 
like air and Ember-week tone of voice was a mere piece of sympa- 
thetic acting, and that he was a merry dog enough when Wilfrid 
was out of sight. ^ 

“See Mr. Monson’s luggage aboard, captain,” said my cousin, 
“ and stowed in his cabin, and then get your anchor. There’s noth- 
ing to keep us now.” 

“Ay, ay, sir!” 

“ Step this way, Charley, that I may introduce you to my sister- 
in-law.” 

He passed his arm through mine, and we walked aft, but I noticed 


26 


AN ocNan tragedy. 


in him a certain manner of cowering, so to speak, as of one who 
fears that he is being watched and talked about; an involuntary 
illustration of profound sensitiveness, no doubt, for, as I have said, 
the yacht lay lonely, and he was hardly likely to dread the scrutiny 
of his own men. 

The girl he introduced me to seemed about nineteen or twenty 
years old. Lady Monson had been described to me as tall, stately, 
slow in movement, and of a reposeful expression of face that would 
have been deemed spiritless in a person wanting the eloquence of 
her rich and tropic charms ; so, at least, my club friend, the young 
baronet, had as good as told me, and it was natural, perhaps, that I 
should expect to find her sister something after her style in height 
and form, if not in color. 

Instead, she was a woman rather under than above the average 
stature, fair in a sort of golden way, by which I wish to convey a 
complexion of exquisite softness and purity, very faintly freckled, as 
though a little gold-dust had been artfully shaken over it ; a hue of 
countenance, so to speak, that blended most admirably with a great 
quantity of hair of a dark gold, whereof there lay upon her brow 
many little natural curls and short tresses, which her white forehead, 
shining through them, refined into a kind of amber color. Her eyes 
were of violet, with a merry spirit in them, which defied the neutral- 
izing influence of the sorrowful expression of her mouth. By some 
she might have been held a thought too stout, but for my part I 
could see nothing that was not perfectly graceful in the curves and 
lines of her figure. I will not pretend to describe how she was 
dressed. In mourning I thought she was at first when she stood at 
a distance. She was sombrely clad, to keep Wilfrid’s melancholy in 
countenance, perhaps, and I dare say she looked the sweeter and 
fairer for being thus apparelled, since there is no wear fitter than 
dark clothes for setting off such skin and hair as hers. Indeed, her 
style of dress and the fashion of her coiffure were the anticipation 
of a taste of a much later date. In those days women brushed their 
hair into a plaster-like smoothness down the cheeks, then coiled it 
behind the ear, and stowed what remained in an ungainly lump at 
the back of the head, into which was stuct a big comb. The dress, 
again, was loose about the body, as though the least revelation of 
the figure were an act of immodesty, and the sleeves were what they 
called gigots; all details, in short, combining to so ugly a result as 
to set me wondering now sometimes that love-making did not come 
to a dead-stand. Miss Laura Jennings’s dress was cut to show her 


AN OC£iAN tragedy. 


27 


figure. The sleeves were tight, and I recollect that she wore gaunt- 
let-shaped gloves that clothed her arm midway to the elbow. 

This which I am writing was my impression, at the instant, of 
the girl with whom I was to be associated for a long while upon the 
ocean, and with whom I was to share in one adventure at all events, 
which I do not doubt you will accept as among the most singular 
that ever befell a voyager. She courtesied with a pretty Old World 
grace to Wilfrid’s introduction, sending at the same time a sparkling 
glance full of spirited criticism through the fringe of her lids, which 
drooped with a deraureness that was almost coquettish, I thought. 
Then she brightened into a frank manner while she extended her hand. 

“ I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Monson ; glad indeed to 
feel sure now that you will be of our party. Sir Wilfrid has talked 
of you much of late. You have acted far more kindly than you can 
imagine in joining us.” 

“We have a fine vessel under us at all events. Miss Jennings,” said 
I, with a look at the unsheltered decks, which stretched under the 
declining sun white as freshly peeled almonds. “ She seems to have 
been born with the right kind of soul, Wilfrid ; and I think that if 
your skipper will tell her quietly what is expected of her, she will 
fulfil your utmost expectations.” 

He forced a melancholy smile which swiftly faded, and then, with 
a start and a stare over the rail on either hand, he exclaimed : “ It 
makes me uneasy to be on deck, d’ye know. I feel — though ’tis 
stupid enough — as if there were eyes yonder and yonder on the 
watch. This restlessness will pass when we get to sea. Let us go 
below ; dinner will be ready by half-past five,” pulling oiit his watch, 
“ and it is now a little after four.” 

He took his sister-in-law’s hand in a brotherly, boyish way, and 
the three of us descended. 

The cabin was as shining and sumptuous an interior as ever I was 
in, or could imagine, indeed, of a yacht’s internal accommodation. 
Mirrors, hand-painted bulkheads, combinations of gilt and cream, 
thick carpets, handsome lamps, silver swinging trays, and twenty 
more elegancies which I will not bore you with, made you feel, as 
you stood at the foot of the companion-steps, as though you had 
entered some delicious, sparkling, fragrant little drawing-room. The 
bedrooms were at each extremity. The berth allotted to me was a 
roomy, airy apartment forward, with a stout bulkhead at the end of 
the short passage that effectually closed this part of the craft from 
whatever might be amidships and beyond. There was a stand 


26 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


of arras fixed here, and ray thoughts instantly went to Colonel Hope- 
Kennedy and Lady Monson, and the crew of the Shark, as I counted 
twenty fowling-pieces, with long polished barrels and bright stocks, 
with hooks alongside from which hung a number of cutlasses and 
pistols of the sort you then found in the small-arras chests aboard 
men-of-war. The pattern of these weapons persuaded me that they 
had been collected in a hurry, purchased out of hand off some South- 
ampton or Gosport dealer. They can signify but one sort of busi- 
ness, ‘thought I ; but bless my heart ! does he seriously entertain 
notions of boarding if we fall in with the craft? And do his men 
suspect his intentions? And has he provided for all things by ship- 
ping a fighting crew ? 

I peered into my berth, saw that it would make me as comfortable 
a sea bedroom as it was possible to desire, and returned to the cabin, 
where Wilfrid and Miss Jennings were sitting, he at a small table 
right aft, sprawling upon it with his elbow, his chin in his hand, his 
face gloomy with melancholy and anger, and his eyes fixed upon a 
port-hole through which he might just get a glimpse of green shore, 
with a tremble of water, yellow under the western light, sweeping to 
it; she near him on a short sofa, with her back against the vessel’s 
side, toying with her hat, which lay in her lap, so that I was now 
able to see that she was indeed a very sweet woman to the topmost 
curl of gold that gleamed upon her head. Indeed, you seemed to 
witness her charms as in a light of her own making. There was 
something positively phosphoric in the irradiation on her face and 
hair, as though in sober truth they were self-luminous. A couple 
of fellows were bringing my luggage down the hatch, but very 
quietly. I knew they were getting the anchor on deck by the dim 
chink, chink of the windlass pawls, but I could hear no other sounds, 
no singing out of orders, nothing save the pulsing of the windlass 
barrel to indicate that we were about to start. There was an ele- 
ment of solemnity in this our first step, at all events, along the 
prodigious liquid highway that we were about to enter, that was not 
a little irksome to me. After all, it was not my wife who had run 
away, and whom I was starting in pursuit of, and though I keenly 
sympathized with my cousin, it was impossible that I could feel or 
look as though I was broken down by grief. 

“We are not a numerous party,” said I, in a hearty way, seating 
myself ; “ one less, indeed, than we bargained for, Wilfrid, for I am 
without a servant. My fellow funked the very name of salt-water, 
and there was no time to replace him.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


29 


“There are two stewards to wait upon you, and rny own valet be- 
sides,” said Wilfrid, bringing his eyes with an effort from the port- 
hole through which he was staring to my face. “Trust me to see 
that you are perfectly comfortable.” 

“ My dear fellow — comfortable ! Why, this is palatial !” I cried, 
with a comprehensive sweep of my hand round the cabin ; “ much 
too luxurious, in my humble opinion ; don’t you think so, Miss Jen- 
nings? Only figure all these fine things going down to swell the 
navies that lie green on the Atlantic ooze.” 

“The Bride is a lovely boat,” she answered — “and very swift, 
Wilfrid says.” 

“ Swift enough to serve my turn, I expect,” said he, with what 
the Scotch call a raised look coming into his face. 

“But why not come on deck?” said I; “no fear of being noticed, 
Wilfrid. Who is there to see us, and who is there to care if any- 
body should see us?” 

He drew his tall, awkward figure together with a shake of the 
head. 

“ Get you on deck by all means, Charles, and take Laura with you 
if she will go. I have occupation until the dinner-bell in my cabin.” 

“Will you accompany me. Miss Jennings?” said I. 

“ Indeed I will,” she exclaimed with an alacrity that exhibited her 
as little disposed as myself to rest passive in the shadow of my 
cousin’s heavy, resentful melancholy. 

He seized my hand in both his as I rose to escort the girl on 
deck. “ God bless you once again, my dear boy, for joining us. 
Presently I shall feel the stronger and perhaps the brighter for having 
you by ray side.” He looked wistfully, still holding my hand^ at Miss 
Jennings, as though he would address a word to her too, but on a 
sudden broke away with a sigh like a sob, and walked hastily to the 
after passage, where his cabin was. 

In silence, and much affected, I handed the girl up the companion- 
steps. Gay and glittering as was the cabin, its inspiration was but 
as that of a charnel-house compared with the sense of life and 
the quickness of spirit you got by mounting on deck, entering the 
shining atmosphere of the autumn afternoon with the high blue sky 
filled with the soft and reddening light of the waning luminary, 
while already the land on either side was gathering to its green and 
gold and brown the tender dyes of the evening. The distance had 
been clarified by a small easterly air that had sprung up since I first 
stepped on board, and the Isle of Wight hung in a soft, pure mass of 


30 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


many dyes upon the white gleam of the water that brimmed to it. 
There was a large frigate, as I imagined her, drawing slowly up past 
Gosport way, heading westward, and the eye fastened upon her with 
a sort of wonder; for, though she looked to be hull down, and the 
merest toy, and indistinguishable by the careless glance as a sail, yet 
she was too defined to pass for a cloud either, while the silver 
brightness seemed impossible in canvas, and you watched her with 
a fancy in you of a large bland star that would be presently afloat 
in the blue, and sparkling there on the brow of the rising night. 
There were a few vessels of different kinds anchored off Southampton, 
and the scene in that direction looked wonderfully fair and peaceful, 
with the spars of the craft gilt with sunshine, and a flash in their 
hulls where paint or glass caught the declining beam, and past them 
the higher reaches of the light-blue water, with the twinkling of 
little sails, that carried the gaze shoreward to the town. 

All this my sight took in quickly. The men had quitted the 
windlass, and were making sail upon the yacht nimbly and so quiet- 
ly, even with a quality of stealth in their manner of pulling and 
hauling, that we could not have been a stiller ship had we been a 
privateersman getting under way on a dark night with a design of 
surprising a rich fabric, or of escaping a heavily armed enemy. They 
looked a stout crew of men, attired without the uniformity that is 
usual in yachting companies in these days, though the diversity of 
dress was not suflficiently marked to offend. I gathered that the ves- 
sel carried a mate as well as a captain, and detected him in the figure 
of a sturdy little fellow, with a cast in his eye and a mat of red hair 
under his chin, who stood between the knight-heads forward, staring 
aloft at a hand on the top-sail yard. Captain Finn saluted the girl 
and me* with a flourish of a hairy paw to his hat, but was too full of 
business to give us further heed. 

“ We shall be under way very soon now. Miss Jennings,” said I. 
“ It is a strange voyage that we are undertaking.” 

“A sad one, too,” she answered. 

“ You show a deal of courage in accompanying Wilfrid,” I ex- 
claimed. 

“ I hesitated at first,” said she, “ but he seemed so sure of over- 
taking the Sharks and pressed me so earnestly to join him, believ- 
ing that the sight of me, or that by my pleading to — to — ” She 
faltered, flushing to the eyes, and half turned from me with such a 
tremulous parting of her lips to the gush of the mild breeze, which 
set a hundred golden fibres of her hair dancing about her ears, that 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


31 


I expected to see a tear upon her cheek when she looked at me 
afresh. I pretended to be interested in nothing but the movements 
of the men who were hoisting the main-sail. 

“ What do you think of the voyage, Mr. Monson ?” she exclaimed, 
after a little pause, though she held her face averted as if waiting 
for the flush to fade out of her cheeks. 

“ It bothers me considerably,” I answered. “ There is nothing to 
make heads or tails of in it that I can see.” 

“ But why ?” and now she stole a sidelong look at me. 

“ Well, first of all,” I exclaimed, “ I cannot imagine that there is 
the faintest probability of our picking up the Shark. She may be 
below the horizon, and we may be sailing three or four leagues 
apart for days at a stretch, and neither ship with the faintest sus- 
picion of the other being close. The ocean is too big for a hunt 
of this sort.” 

“ But suppose we should pick her up, to use your term, Mr. Monson ?” 

“ Suppose it, Miss Jennings, and add this supposition : that the 
gallant colonel” — she frowned at his name, with a sweet curl of 
horror on her lip as she looked down — “ who will long before have 
twigged us, declines to heave to or have anything whatever to do 
with us ; what then ?” 

“ I suggested this to your cousin,” she answered, quickly ; “ it is a 
most natural objection to make. He answered that if the Shark re- 
fused to stop when he hailed her — that’s the proper term, I know 
— he would compel her to come to a stand by continuing to fire, even 
if it came to sinking her, though his object would be to knock her 
mast down to prevent her from sailing.” 

I checked a smile at the expression “ knock her mast down,” and 
then caught myself running my glance round in search of any hint 
of ordnance of a persuasive kind ; and now it was that I noticed 
for the first time, secured amidships of the forecastle, and comfortably 
housed and tarpaulined, something that my naval instincts were 
bound to promptly interpret into a long- tom, and of formidable 
calibre, too, if the right sort of hint of it was to be obtained out of 
its swathing. I also observed another feature that had escaped me ; 
I mean a bow-port on either side the bowsprit — a detail of equip- 
ment so uncommon in a pleasure craft as to force me to the conclu- 
sion that the apertures had been quite newly cut and fitted. 

I uttered a low whistle, while I found my companion’s gaze rooted 
upon me with the same critical attention in .the spirited blue gleam 
of it I had before noticed. 


32 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Well,” said I, taking breath, “ upon my word, though, I should 
not have thought he had it in him. Yes; yonder’s a remedy,” I 
continued, nodding in the direction of the forecastle, “ to correspond 
with Wilfrid’s intentions if he’s fortunate enough to fall in with the 
Shark. Will she be armed, I wonder? It would then make the 
oddest of all peppering matches.” 

“ If the yacht escapes, we are certain to meet her at the Cape,” 
said Miss Jennings. 

It was idle to argue on matters of seamanship with the pretty 
creature. 

“ Wilfrid has said little on the subject to me,” I remarked. “ He 
was dreadfully overcome when he called to ask me to accompany 
him. But it is good and brave of you to enter upon this wild ex- 
periment with a womanly and a sisterly hope of courting the fugi- 
tive back to her right and only resting-place. My cousin will re- 
ceive her then.” 

“ He means to come between her and the consequences of her — 
of her folly,” said she, coloring again, with a flash in her eye and a 
steady confrontment of me, “ let the course he may afterwards make 
up his mind to be what it will.” 

I saw both distress and a little hint of temper in her face, and 
changed the subject. 

“ Have you been long in England ?” 

“I arrived three months ago at Sherburne Abbey (my cousin’s 
seat in the North). You know I am an Australian ?” 

“ Yes, but not through Wilfrid, of whose marriage I should have 
learned nothing but fpr hearing it talked about one day in a club. A 
young baronet who had met Lady Monson was loud in her praises. 
He described her as a wonderfully beautiful woman, but dark, with 
flery Spanish eyes and raven tresses and here I peeped at her own 
soft violet stars and sunny hair. 

‘‘Yes, she is beautiful, Mr. Monson,” she answered, sadly — “too 
beautiful, indeed. Her face has proved a fatal gift to her. What 
madness!” she exclaimed, whispering her words almost. “And 
there never was a more devoted husband than Wilfrid. And her 
baby, the little lamb 1 Oh, how could she do it — how could she 
do it !” 

“ With whom has the child been placed?” said I. 

“ With a cousin, Mrs. Trevor.” 

“ Oh, I know — a dear, good creature ; the bairn will be in excel- 
lent hands.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


33 


“Sir Wilfrid was too affectionate, Mr. Monson. You know,” she 
continued, looking at me sidewise, her face very grave, “ if vou have 
ceased to love or to like a person your aversion will grow in propor- 
tion as he grows fond of you. It is not true, Mr. Monson, that love 
begets love. No ; if it were true my sister would be the happiest 
of women.” 

“ Have you met Colonel Hope-Kennedy ?” 

“Oh yes, often and often. He was a very constant visitor at 
Sherburne Abbey.” 

“ Pretty good-looking ?” 

“ Tall, very gentlemanly, not by any means handsome, to my taste, 
but I have no doubt many women would think him so.” 

“ The name is familiar to me, but I never met the man. Did he 
live in the North ?” 

“ No ; whenever he came to Sherburne Abbey he was your 
cousin’s guest.” 

Phew ! thought I. “And of course,” I said, willing to pursue the 
subject afresh, since it did not seem now to embarrass her to refer 
to it, while I was curious to learn as much of the story as could be 
got, “ my cousin had no suspicion of the scoundrelism of the man 
he was entertaining.” 

“ No, nor is he to be blamed. He is a gentleman, Mr. Monson, 
and like all fine, generous,’ amiable natures, very, very slow to dis- 
trust persons whom he has honored with his friendship. When he 
came to me with the news that Henrietta had left him, I believe he 
had gone utterly mad, knowing him to be just a little — ” She hes- 
itated, and ran her eyes over my face as though positively she halt- 
ed merely to the notion that perhaps I was a trifle gone, too ; and 
then, clasping her hands before her, and hanging her head so as to 
look as if she was speaking with her eyes closed, she went on : “I 
was much with Henrietta, and often when Colonel Hope-Kennedy 
was present. I had ridden with them, had watched them while they 
played billiards — a game my sister was very fond of — observed them 
at the piano when she was singing and he turning the music, or 
when she accompanied him in a song. He sang well. But — it 
might be, it is true, because I was as unsuspicious as Wilfrid — yet I 
declare, Mr. Monson, that I never witnessed so much as a look ex- 
changed between them of a kind to excite a moment’s uneasiness. 
No ! Wilfrid cannot be charged with blindness ; the acting was as 
exquisite as the object was detestable.” And she flushed up again, 
half turning from me, with a stride towards the rail and a wander- 
3 


34 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


ing look at the green country, which I accepted as a hint that she 
wished the subject to drop. 

The yacht was now under way. They had catted, and were fish- 
ing the anchor forward. I noticed that the man I had taken to be 
the mate had arrived aft and was at the wheel. The vessel’s head 
was pointing fair for the Solent, and already you heard a faint 
crackling sound like a delicate rending of satin rising from under 
the bows, though there was so little weight in the draught of air 
that the Bride floated without the least perceptible list or inclina- 
tion, spite of all plain sail being upon her, with the exception of the 
top-gallant sail. 

“ Fairly started at last. Miss Jennings,” said 1. 

She glanced round as though disturbed in an absorbing reverie, 
smiled, and then looked sad enough to weep, all in a breath. 

Well, it was a solemn moment for her, I must say. She had her 
maid with her, it is true ; but she was the only lady on board. There 
was none of her own quality with whom she could talk apart — no 
other woman to keep her in countenance, so to speak, with the sym- 
pathy of presence and sex; she was bound on a trip of which no 
mortal man could have dated the termination — an adventure that 
might carry her all about the world for aught she knew ; for, since 
she was fully conscious of the very variable weather of my cousin’s 
mind, she would needs be too shrewd not to conjecture that many 
wild and surprising things were quite likely to happen while the 
power of directing the movements of the yacht remained his. 

And then, again, she was in quest of her sister without a higher 
hope to support her than a fancy — that was the merest dream to my 
mind when I thought of the little baby the woman had left behind 
her, to say nothing of her husband — that her passionate entreaties 
backing Wilfrid’s might coax her ladyship to quit the side of the 
gallant figure she had run away with. 

Just then the merry silver tinkling of a bell smartly rung sounded 
through the open skylight, and at the same moment the form of a 
neat and comely young woman arose in the companion-hatch. 

“ What is it, Graham ?” inquired Miss Jennings. 

“The first dinner-bell, miss. The second will ring at the half- 
hour.” 

The girl pulled out a watch of the size of a thumb-nail, and ex- 
claimed : “It is already five o'clock, Mr. Monson. It cannot be a 
whole hour since you arrived ! I hope the time will pass as quickly 
when we are at sea,” 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


35 


Slie linprered a moment gazing shoreward, sheltering her eyes sail- 
or fashion with an ungloved hand of milk-white softness, on which 
sparkled a gem or two ; then, giving me a slight bow, she went to 
the companion and stepped down the ladder with the grace and ease 
of a creature floating on wings. Ho, ho ! thought I, she will have 
her sea legs, anyhow ; no need, therefore. Master Charles, to be too 
officious with your hand and arm when the hour of tumblefication 
comes. But that she was likely to prove a good sailor was reasona- 
ble, seeing that she was comparatively fresh from probably a four 
months’ passage from Melbourne. 

I followed her after a short interval, and then to the summons of 
the second dinner-bell entered the cabin. The equipment of the 
table rendered festal the sumptuous furniture of this interior with 
the sparkle of silver and crystal, and the dyes of wines blending 
with the centrai show of rich flowers. The western sunshine lay 
upon the skylight, and the atmosphere was ruddy with it. One is 
apt to be curious when in novel situations, and I must confess that 
yachting in such a craft as this was something very new to me, not 
to speak of the uncommon character one’s experiences at the outset 
would take from the motive and conditions of the voyage ; and this 
will prove my apology for saying that while I stood waiting for 
Wilfrid and his sister-in-law to arrive, I bestowed more attention, 
furtive as it might be, upon the two stewards and my cousin’s man 
than I should have thought of obliging them with ashore. The 
stewards were commonplace enough — a pair of trim-built fellows, 
the head one’s face hard with that habitual air of solicitude which 
comes at sea to a man whose duties lie among crockery and bills of 
fare, and whose leisure is often devoted to dark and mysterious al- 
tercations with the cook; the second steward was noticeable for 
nothing but a large strawberry mark on his left cheek ; but Wilfrid’s 
man was worth a stare. I had no recollection of him, and conse- 
quently he must have been taken into my cousin’s service since I 
was last at the Abbey, as we used to call it. He had the appear- 
ance of a man who had been bred to the business of a mute — a lan- 
tern-jawed, yellow, hollow-eyed person, whose age might have been 
five-and-twenty or five-and-forty ; hair as black as coal, glossy as 
grease, brushed flat to the tenacity of sticking-plaster, and fitting his 
egg-shaped skull like a wig. He was dressed in black, his trousers 
a little short and somewhat tight at the ankles, where they revealed 
a pair of white socks bulging with a hint of gout over the sides of 
a pair of pumps. He stood behind the chair that Wilfrid would 


36 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


take with his hands reverentially clasped upon his waistcoat, his 
whole posture indicative of humility and resignation. Nothing 
could be more in harmony with the melancholy nature of our expe- 
dition than this fellow’s countenance. 

Miss Jennings arrived and took her place; she was followed by 
my cousin, who walked to the table with the gait of a person fol- 
lowing a coffin. This sort of thing, thought I, must be suffered for 
a day or two, but afterwards, if the air is not to be cleared by a 
rousing laugh, it won’t be for lack of any effort on my part to tune 
up my pipes. 


AN OCEAN Til AGED Y. 


37 


CHAPTER IV. 

IN THE SOLENT. 

The dinner was exquisitely cooked, and as perfectly ordered a re- 
past as the most fastidious could devise or desire; but very little was 
said — mainly, I suspect, because our thoughts were filled with the one 
subject we could not refer to while the attendants hung about us. 
What fell was the merest commonplace, but I noticed that while 
Wilfrid ate little he offered no objection to the frequent replenish- 
ing of his glass with champagne by the melancholy chap who stood 
behind him. 

By-and-by we found ourselves alone. 

‘‘ That is very honest port ; you need not be afraid of it, Charles,” 
said my cousin. “ Do you understand gunnery ?” 

“ I believe I could load a piece and point it,” said I, smiling, “ but 
beyond that — ” 

“ Have you seen the gun on the forecastle ?” 

Just the outline of a cannon,” I answered, “under a smother of 
tarpaulin. What is called a long-tom, I think.” 

“You will have guessed the object of my mounting it?” said he, 
with a frown darkening his face to one of those angry moods which 
would sweep athwart his mind like the deep but flitting shadows 
of squall clouds over a gloomy sky, sullen with the complexion of 
storm. 

“Yes; Miss Jennings explained,” I answered, glancing at her and 
meeting her eye, in which I seemed to find the faintest hint of re- 
buke, as though she feared I might be laughing in my sleeve. 
“ What’s the calibre, Wilfrid ?” 

“ Eighteen pounds,” he answered. 

“An eighteen-pounder, eh? That should bring the Shark's spars 
about their ears, though. Let me think. The range of an eighteen- 
pounder will be, at an elevation of five degrees, a little over a mile.” 

“ If,” cried my cousin — lifting his hand as though to smite the ta- 
ble, then bringing his clinched fist softly down, manifestly checked 
in some hot impetuous impulse by the sense of the presence of the 
girl, who regarded him with a face as serious as though she were 


aN ocean tragedy. 


listening to a favorite preacher — “if,” he repeated, sobering his 
voice with the drooping of his arm, “we succeed in overhauling the 
Sharks and they refuse to heave her to, my purpose is to wreck 
her aloft, and then^ should they show fight, to continue firing at 
her until I sink her.” 

There w'as a vicious expression in his eyes as he said this, to which 
the peculiar indescribable trembling or quivering of the lids imparted 
a singular air of cunning. 

“ Is the Shark armed, do you know ?” said I: 

“ She carries a couple of small brass pieces, I believe, for purposes 
of signalling. Pop-guns,” said he, contemptuously. “ But I fancy 
she has an armory of her own. Lord Winterton was constantly 
cruising north on shooting excursions, and it is quite likely that he 
let the weapons which belong to him with the yacht.” 

“ If Colonel Hope-Ken nedy’s programme,” said I, “includes a ram- 
ble among the South Sea Islands, you may reckon upon his having 
equipped himself with small-arms and powder enough, if only with 
an eye to man-eating rogues. But to revert to your long-tom, Wil- 
frid. It should not be hard to sink a yacht with such a piece ; but 
you are not for murdering your wife, my dear fellow ?” 

“ No, no,” said he, slowly, and speaking to me, though he kept his 
eyes fixed upon his sister-in-law, “ have no fear of that. It is I that 
am the murdered man.” He pressed his hand to his heart. “Rather 
put it thus : that when they find their vessel hulled and sinking they 
will get their boats over and be very willing to be picked up by us.” 

“ But your round-shot may knock their boats into staves,” said I, 
“ and what then ?” 

“ Onr own boats will be at hand to rescue them,” said he, now 
looking at me full with an expression of relish of the argument. 

“ But, my dear Wilfrid,” said I, “ don’t you know that when a 
craft founders she has a trick of drowning most of the people aboard 
her, and among the few survivors, d’ye see, who contrived to support 
themselves by whatever lay floating might not he Lady Monson !” 

He took a deep breath, and said, so slowly that he seemed to artic- 
ulate with difficulty : “Be it so. I have made up my mind. If we 
overhaul the Shark, and she declines to heave to, I shall fire into her. 
The blood of whatever follows will be upon their heads. This has 
been forced upon me ; it is none of my seeking. I do not mean that 
Colonel Hope-Kennedy shall possess my wife, and I will take her from 
him alive if possible ; but rest assured I am not to be hindered from 
separating them, though her death should be the consequence.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


30 


Miss Jennings clasped her fingers upon her forehead and sat mo- 
tionless, looking down. For a little I was both startled and bewil- 
dered ; one moment he talked as though his wish was that his wife 
should not be harmed, and the next, in some concealed convulsion 
of wrath, he betrayed a far blacker resolution than ever I could have 
imagined him capable of. Yet in the brief silence that followed I 
had time to rid myself of my little fit of consternation by consider- 
ing, first of all, that he was now talking just as, according to my no- 
tion, he was acting — insanely ; next, that it was a thousand to one 
against our falling in with the yacht ; and again, supposing we came 
up with her, it was not very probable that the crew of the Bride 
could be tempted, even by heavy bribes, into a measure that might 
put them in jeopardy of their necks or their liberty. 

It was now dark, and the cabin lamps had been for some time 
lighted. The evening looked black against the port-holes and the 
skylight, but the cheerfulness and beauty of the cabin were greatly 
heightened by the sparkling of the oil-flames in the mirrors, the swing 
trays, the glass-like surface of the bulkheads, and so on. Miss Laura’s 
golden loveliness — do not laugh at my poor nautical attempts to put 
this amber-colored, violet-eyed woman before you — showed, as one 
may well suppose of such a complexion and tints, incomparably per- 
fect, I thought, in the soft though rich radiance diffused by the burn- 
ing sperm. I wondered that she should listen so passively to Wil- 
frid’s confession of his intentions should we overhaul the Shark. 
My gaze went to her as he concluded that little speech I have just 
set down ; but I witnessed no alteration in as much of her face as 
was visible, nor any stir, as of one startled or shocked, in her posture. 
Possibly she did not master all the significance of his words ; for how 
should a girl realize the full meaning of plumping round-shot out of 
an eighteen-pounder into a vessel till she was made a sieve of ? Or it 
might be that she was of my mind in regarding the expedition as a 
lunatic undertaking, and in suspecting that a few weeks of this ocean 
hunt would sicken Wilfrid of his determination to chase the Shark 
round the world. Or mingled with these fancies, besides, there might 
be enough of violent resentment against her sister, of grief, pain, 
shame, to enable her to listen with an unmoved countenance to fiercer 
and wilder menaces than Wilfrid had as yet delivered himself of. 

These thoughts occupied my mind during the short spell of silence 
that followed my cousin’s speech. He suddenly rang a little hand- 
bell, and his melancholy servant came sliding up to him out of the 
little cabin. 


40 


AN OCEAN TEAGEOY. 


“ Tell Captain Finn I wish to see him — that is, if he can leave the 
deck.” 

The fellow mounted the steps. 

“ What is the name of that gloomy-looking man of yours, Wil- 
frid?” 

“ Muffin,” he answered. 

“ Have I not seen somebody wonderfully like him,” said I, “ hold- 
ing on with drunken gravity to the top of a hearse trotting home 
from the last public-house along the road from the graveyard ?” 

Miss Laura laughed; and there was a girlish freshness and arch 
cordiality in her laughter that must have put me into a good humor, 
I think, had it been my wife, instead of Wilfrid’s, that Colonel 
Hope-Kennedy was sailing away with. 

“ Maybe, Charles, maybe,” he answered, with a dull smile ; “ he 
may have been an undertaker’s man for all I know, though I doubt 

it, because I had him from Lord , with a five years’ character, 

every word of which has proved true. But I knew you would have 
your joke. The fellow fits my temper to a hair; he has a hearse- 
like face, I admit ; but then he is the quietest man in the world — a 
very ghost. Summon him, and if he shaped himself out of thin air 
he couldn’t appear at your elbow more noiselessly. That’s his main 
recommendation to me. Any kind of noise now I find distracting, 
even music; Laura will tell you that I’ll run a mile to escape the 
sound of a piano.” 

At this moment a pair of pilot breeches showed themselves in the 
companion-way, and down came Captain Finn. As he stood, hat in 
hand, soberly clothed with nothing more gimcrack in the way of 
finery upon him than a row of brass waistcoat-buttons, I thought he 
looked a very proper, sailorly sort of man. There was no lack of 
intelligence in his eyes, which protruded, as from a long habit of 
staring too eagerly to windward, and trying to see into the inside of 
gales of wind. He was remarkable, however, for a face that was out 
of all proportion too long, not for the width of his head only, but 
for his body ; while his legs, on the other hand, were as much too 
short, so that he submitted himself as a person whose capacity of 
growth had been experimentally distributed, in so much that his 
legs appeared to have come to a full stop when he was still a youth, 
while in his face the active principle of elongation had continued 
laborious until long after the term when nature should have made 
an end. 

“A glass of wine, captain?” said Sir Wilfrid. 


AK OCEAl^ TUAGEDY. 


41 


“Thank your honor. Need makes the old wife trot, they sa\', 
and I feel a-dry — I feel a-dry.” 

“ Put your hat down and sit, Finn. I want you to give my cous- 
in, Mr. Monson, your views respecting this — this voyage. But first, 
where are we ?” 

“ Why,” answered the captain, balancing the wineglass awkwardly 
between a thumb and a forefinger that resembled nothing so much 
as a brace of stumpy carrots, while he directed a nervous look from 
Wilfrid to me, and on to Miss Laura, as though he would have us 
observe that he addressed us generally, “ there’s Yarmouth lights 
opening down over the port bow, and I reckon to be clear of the 
Solent by about three bells — half-past nine o’clock.” 

“ The navigation hereabouts,” said I, “ needs a bright lookout. 
The captain may not thank us for calling him below.” 

“Lord love ’ee, Mr. Monson, sir,” he answered, “the mate, Jacob 
Crimp, him with the one eye slewed — if so be as you’ve noticed the 
man, sir — he’s at the helm, and I’d trust him for any inshore navi- 
gation, from the Good’ens to the Start, blindfolded. Why, he knows 
his soundings by the smell of the mud.” 

“ How is the weather ?” inquired my cousin. 

“ Fine, clear night, sir ; the stars plentiful and the moon a-rising. 
The wind’s drawed a bit norradly, and ’s briskening at that ; yet it 
keeps a draught, with nothing noticeable in the shape of weight in 
it. Well, your honor, and you, Mr. Monson, sir, and you, my lady, 
all I’m sure I can say is, here’s luck !” and down went the wine. 

“ Captain,” said Sir Wilfrid, “ oblige me "by giving Mr. Monson 
your views of the chase we have started upon.” 

Finn put down the wineglass, and dried his lips on a pocket-hand- 
kerchief of the size of a small ensign. 

“ Well,” he began, with a nervous, uneasy twisting about of his 
legs and feet, “ my view’s this : Fidler isn’t likely to take any other 
road to the Cape than the one that’s followed by the Indiemen. 
Now,” said he, laying a forefinger in the palm of his big hand, yel- 
low still with ancient stains of tar, while Wilfrid watched him in his 
near-sighted way, leaning forward in the posture of one absorbed by 
what is said, “ you may take that there road as skirting the Bay o’ 
Biscay, and striking the latitude of forty at about fifteen degrees 
east; then a south by west-half-west course for the Canaries, the 
equator to be cut at twenty-five degrees west, and a straight course 
for Trinidad to follow, with a clean brace up to the south-east trades. 
What d’ye think, sir?” 


42 


oci:AN 'Tragedy. 


“ Oh, ’tis about the road, no doubt,” said I ; for whatever might 
have been my thoughts, I had no intention to drop a discouraging 
syllable then before Finn in my cousin’s hearing. 

“ But,” said the captain, eying me nervously and anxiously, “ if 
so be as we should have the luck to fall into that there Shark's 
wake, you know, we sha’n’t need to trouble ourselves with the course 
to the Cape south of the equator.” 

“ Of course not !” exclaimed Sir Wilfrid. 

“ By which I mean to say,” continued the captain, giving his back 
hair a pull, as though it were some bell-rope with which he desired 
to ring up the invention or imagination that lay drowsy in his brain, 
“ that if we aren’t on to the Shark this side the Line, it’ll be better 
for us to tarn to and make up our mind to crack on all for Table 
Bay, to be there afore her, without further troubling ourselves about 
her heaving in sight, though of course the same bright lookout ’ll be 
kept.” 

“ Good !” said Wilfrid, with a heavy nod ; “ that’s not to be bet- 
tered, I think, Charles.” 

“I suppose,” said I, addressing Finn, “that though your hope 
will be to pick up the Shark any day after a given period, and 
though you’ll follow the scent of her as closely as your conjecture 
of Fidler’s navigation will admit, you will still go on sweating — 
pray pardon this word in its sea sense. Miss Jennings — your craft as 
though the one business of the expedition was to make the swiftest 
possible passage to the Cape of Good Hope ?” 

“Ay, never sparing a cloth, sir; and she’s something to jockey, Mr. 
Monson. You don’t know her yet, sir.” 

“ The Shark's a fore-and-aft schooner ?” 

“ Yes,” he answered. 

“She carries a square-sail, no doubt?” ^ 

“Ay, a big un, but good only for running; and we ain’t without 
that canvas, too, you must know,” he added, with the twinkle of 
humor in his gaze that I had observed in him when Wilfrid had first 
made him known to me. “ Enough of it, Mr. Monson, to hold wind 
to serve a Dutchman for a week, not to mention a torp-s’l and a t’gal- 
lant-s’l fit for a line-o’-battle ship to ratch under.” 

This was vague talk, but it pleased Wilfrid. 

“ Square yards are very well,” said I, “ but surely they don’t allow 
a vessel to look up to it as though her canvas was fore and aft only ? 
I merely ask for information. My marine experiences were limited 
to square rigs.” 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


43 


“ There’s nothin’ to prevent the Bride from looking up to it as 
close as the Shark , answered Finn. “ The yards ’ll lie fore and aft; 
what’s to hinder them? There ain’t no spread, sir, like what you 
get in ships with your futtock-rigging and backstays and shrouds in 
the road of the slings, elbowing their ways to channels big enough 
for a ball-room. Besides,” he added, “ suppose it should be a mat- 
ter of a quarter of a p’int’s difference, we need but stow the square 
cloths, and then we ain’t no worse off than the Shark''' 

“ True,” said I, thinking more of Miss Jennings than of what Finn 
was saying, so perfect a picture of girlish beauty did she happen to 
be at that instant, as she leaned on her elbow, supporting her chin 
with a small white hand, her form in a posture that left one side of 
her face in shadow, while the other side lay bright, golden, and soft 
in the lamplight over the table. She was listening with charming 
gravity, and a countenance of sympathy whose tenderness was unim- 
paired by an appearance of attention that I could not doubt was 
just a little forced, since our sailor talk could not but be Greek to 
her. Besides, at intervals, there was a lift of the white lid, a gleam 
of the violet eye, which was like assuring one that thought was kept 
in the direction of our conversation only by constraint. 

I was beginning to feel the want of a cigar, and I had been sit- 
ting long enough now to make me pine for a few turns on deck, 
but I durst not be abrupt in the face of my cousin’s devouring stare 
at his skipper, and the pathetic spectacle of the contending passions 
in him as he hearkened, now nodding, nojv gloomily smiling, now 
lying back on a sudden with a frown which he made as if to smooth 
out by pressing his hand to his brow. 

“ The Shark," said I, “ has five days’ start of us. Give her a 
hundred miles a day for the mere sake of argument ; she should be, 
at that, well in the heart of the bay.” 

“ By Heaven ! within arm’s-length of us, when you put it so !” 
cried Wilfrid, extending his hand in a wild, darting, irrelevant gest- 
ure, and closing his fingers with a snap, as though upon some phan- 
tom throat he had seen and thought to clutch. 

“ Five hundred miles,” exclaimed Finn, apparently giving no heed 
to the baronet’s action. “ Well, sir, as a bit of supposing, there’s 
no harm in it. It might be more. I should allow less. There’s 
been no weight of wind down Channel. What’s happened, then, to 
blow her along? But there’s no telling. Anyhow,” said he, pick- 
ing up his cap and rising, “ there’s nothing in five hundred miles, 
no, nor in a thousand, to make us anxious with such a race-course 


44 


an ocean tragedy. 


as lies afore us. ’Tain’t as if we’d got to catch the craft before 
she’d made Madeira.” He paused, looking a little irresolute, and 
then said, addressing Wilfrid, “ I don’t know if there’s anything 
more your honor would like to ask of me ?” 

“ No, not for the moment,” answered my cousin, dully, with the 
air of a man languid with a sudden sense of weariness or exhaustion 
following some internal fiery perturbation. “ It is just this, Finn : 
Mr. Monson served in the Royal Navy for a few years, and I was 
anxious that he should be at once made acquainted with your views, 
so that he and you could combine your experiences. You have 
chased in your time, Charles, no doubt ?” 

“Not very often, and then always something that was in sight,” 
I answered, with a slight glance at Finn, whose gaze instantly fell 
while he exclaimed : 

“Well, sir, any suggestion you can make I’ll be mighty thankful 
to receive. But it’ll be all plain sailing, I don’t doubt ; it’ll be all 
plain sailing,” he repeated, rumbling out the words in a stifled hurri- 
cane note, and giving us a bow, he went up the steps. 

Wilfrid gazed at me vacantly when I proposed a cigar on deck. 

“ What do you think of Finn ?” he asked. 

“ He seems as honest a man and as practical a seaman as needs 
be. But he has had command of this yacht since you bought 
her ?” 

He nodded. “ Well, then, of course you know all about him. 
He has clearly been a merchant Jack in his day, and has all neces- 
sary experience, I dare say, to qualify him for this charge. But I 
say, Wilfrid, let us go on deck, my dear fellow. Miss Jennings, I 
am sure, will not object to the scent of a cigar in the open air.” 

“ Nor down here, either,” she exclaimed. 

“ I shall remember that,” said I, gratefully. “ Now, Wilfrid, 
won’t you — ” 

“No,” he interrupted; “I am drowsy, and thank Heaven for a 
sensation that threatens to become a novelty. If I get no rest to- 
night it will be my eighth of sleeplessness, and I must humor my- 
self ; yes, I must humor myself,” he repeated, talking in a sort of 
muttering way, and rising. 

I advised him by all means to withdraw if he really felt tired, 
and further recommended a boatswain’s calker of whiskey to top 
off the champagne and port he had been swallowing. 

“ How will you amuse yourself, Laura?” he exclaimed, turning to 
her. “ It will be dull work for you, I fear.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


45 


“ No, no,” cried I, blithely, “ why need Miss Jennings be dull ? It . 
must be our business to keep her lively.” 

“ I can sit and read here,” said she, “ till it is time to go to bed. 
What is the hour, Mr. Monson ?” 

“Just on the stroke of eight,” said I. 

She made a pretty little grimace, and then burst into one of her 
refreshing cordial laughs. 

“A little early for bed, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed. 

He smothered a yawn and responded: “I will leave you to 
Charles. Would to Heaven I had his spirits. God bless you both! 
— good-night.” 

He rang for his valet, and stalked with hanging arms and droop- 
ing head, in the most melancholic manner picturable, to his cabin. 

I asked Miss Jennings to accompany me on deck. 

“ There is a moon in the air,” said I, “ you may see the haze of 
it through this port-hole ; but I must not forget that it is an autumn 
night, so let me beg you to wrap yourself warmly while I slip on a 
pea-coat.” 

I fancied she hung in the wind an instant, as a girl might who 
could not promptly see her way to walking the deck of a yacht 
alone with a young man on a moonlight or any other night, but 
she assented so quickly in reality that I dare say my suspicion was 
an idle and groundless bit of sensitiveness. Five minutes later we 
were on deck together. 

The yacht was floating through the dusk, that was tinctured into 
glimmering pearl by the broad face of the silver moon which had 
already climbed several degrees above the black sky-line of the Isle 
of Wight, without the least perceptible stir or tremor in her frame. 
The wind was well abaft the starboard beam ; the great main-boom 
overhung the port quarter ; the white sail rose wan to the moon- 
shine, with a large gaff-topsail above it — for those were the days 
of gaffs — dimming into a space of airy faintness to the mast-head, 
above the white button of whose truck you caught the icy gleam of 
a metal vane, as though it was a piece of meteoric scoring under the 
dust of the stars that hovered in the velvet gloom like a sheet of un- 
dulating silver glooming out into hollows in places. Light as the 
breeze was, and following us, besides, it held the canvas asleep ; but 
that every cloud-like cloth was doing its work, too, the ear quickly 
noted in the pleasant fountain-like sounds of running waters over 
the side, with a cool, seething noise in the wake, and a fairy tinkling 
of exploding foam-bells. The land to port loomed black against 


46 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


the moonshine, save where some slope or other, catching the slant- 
ing beam, showed the faint green of its herbage or wooded growths 
in a very phantasm of hue, like some verdant stretch of land dyeing 
an attenuated veil of vapor witnessed afar upon the ocean. Over 
the port bow I caught sight of a light or two a long way down the 
dusky reach, as it seemed, with a brighter gleam to starboard where 
the land, catching the moonlight, came in visionary streaks and 
breaks to abeam and on past the quarter, where it seemed to melt 
out into some twinkling beacon — off Calshot Castle, may be, so far 
astern it looked. 

I spied the sturdy figure of the mate standing beside the wheel, 
no longer steering, but manifestly conning the yacht. The skipper 
was abreast of the skylight, leaning over the rail, with his arm round 
a backstay. There were figures moving forward, tipping the gloom 
there with the scarlet points of glowing bowls of tobacco, but if 
they conversed it was in whispers. The stillness was scarce imag- 
inable. It was heightened yet even to my fancy presently when, 
growing used to the light, I spied the phantom figure of what was 
apparently a large brig, clouded to her royals with pale canvas, stem- 
ming the Solent, outward bound, some half a mile distant. 

“ There is no dew,” said I ; “ the moon shines purely, and is full 
of promise so far as fine weather goes. Well, here we are fairly 
started, indeed. It is almost a dream to me. Miss Jennings, d’ye 
know ?” T continued, staring about me. “Three days ago I had 
no notice of anything having gone wrong with my cousin, and there- 
fore little dreamed, as you will suppose, of what I was to enter upon 
this blessed afternoon. Three days ago ! And now here I am 
heading into God knows what part of this mighty ocean, as empty 
of all theory of destination as though I were bound in a balloon to 
the part the poets call interstellar space. How is it all to end, I 
wonder ?” 

She was pacing quietly by my side. 

“ You think the pursuit a silly one, Mr. Monson ?” 

“ Yes, I do, and Wilfrid knows that I do. If he were not — he is 
my cousin. Miss Jennings, and a dear friend, and you are his sister- V' 

in-law, and dear to him, too, I am sure, and so I dare be candid with i • 

you — if it were not that he — ” I touched my forehead ; “ would he 
embark on such a quest as this?” 

“Yes,” she replied, with just enough of heat or temper, or what- 
ever you like to call it, in her voice to render her utterance distinct 
with unconscious emphasis. “ He adored his wife. Can a man 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


47 


tear his love into piec&s in a day, as though it were no more than a < 
tedious old letter? He thinks he hates her; he does so in a sense, 
no doubt, but in a sense, too, he still worships her. Mad ! that is 
what you mean.” 

I was beginning to protest. 

“Yes, it is what you mean, and you are right and wrong. If he 
does not pursue her, if he does not recover her, she is lost forever ! 
She is lost now, you will tell me. Ay,” she cried, with a little stamp, 

“ lost so far as her husband’s heart goes, so far as her honor is con- 
cerned ; but not so utterly lost as she will later be if she is not res- 
cued from that — that man, who must be so served, Mr.^Ionson, as 
to render it impossible for him ever again to trouble the peace of 
another home, to bfeak the heart of a noble-minded creature, and 
rob a little infant of its mother. Hate him ! Oh, girl as I am, I de- 
clare before my Maker I would shoot him with my own hand !” 

There was nothing in the least degree theatrical in her way of 
speaking. The words came in a hurry to her lips from her indig- 
nant heart, and I heard the sincerity of them so clearly in the mere 
utterance, I did not doubt for an instant that, put a pistol in her 
hand, and set up the figure of the colonel in front of her, she would 
have sought for his heart, if he had one, with the barrel of the weapon, 
without so much as a sigh at having to kill him. I felt abashed; 
her sincerity and resentment were overwhelming ; her strength of 
feeling, too, won a peculiar accentuation from the character of airy 
delicacy, of tender fragility, the moonlight gave to her golden beauty. 

It was like listening to a volume of sounds poured forth by a sing- 
ing-bird, and wondering that such far-reaching melody should be 
produced by so small a creature. 

“ I fear,” said I, “ you don’t think me very sincere in my sympa- 
thy with Wilfrid — ” 

“Oh yes, Mr. Monson,” she interrupted ; “ do not suppose such a 
thing. It is not to be imagined that you should take this cruel and 
miserable affair to heart as he does, or feel as I do, who am her 
sister.” 

“The truth is,” said I, “it is impossible for a bachelor not to take 
a cynical view of troubles of this sort. A man was charged with 
the murder of his sweetheart. The judge said to him, ‘ Had the 
woman been your wife, your guilt would not have been so great, be- 
cause you would have no other means of getting rid of her save by 
killing her; but the unhappy creature whose throat you cut you 
could have sent adrift without trouble.’ What I mean to say is, 


48 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


Miss Jennings, that a husband does not merit half the pity that is 
felt for him if his wife elopes. He is easily quit of a woman who 
is his wife only by name. I am for pitying her. The inevitable se- 
quel, the disgrace, desertion, and the rest of it, is as punctual as the 
indications of the hand of a clock. But see how nimbly the Bride 
floats through all this darkness and quietude. We shall be passing 
that vessel shortly, and yet for canvas she might really be one of 
the pyramids of Egypt towing down Channel.” 

We wentTo the rail to look ; I, for one, glad enough to change the 
subject, for it was nothing less than profanity to be arguing with so 
sweet a little woman as this — in the pure white shining of the 
moon, too, and with something of an ocean freshness of atmosphere 
all about us — on such a gangrenous subject as the elopement of Lady 
Monson with Colonel Hope-Kennedy. Out of all my sea-going ex- 
periences I could not pick a fairer picture than was made by the brig 
we were passing, clad as she was in moonlight, and rising in steam- 
colored spaces to mere films of royals, motionless under the stars. 
She was a man-of-war ; the white of her broad band, that was bro- 
ken by black ports, gleamed like the ivory of piano-forte keys ; her 
canvas was exquisitely cut and set, and trimmed as naval men know 
how, one yard-arm looking backward a little over another, the rounded 
silent cloths, faint in the radiance with a gleam as of alabaster show- 
ing through a delicate haze, and high aloft the tremor of a pennant, 
like the .expiring trail of a shooting-star. All was as hushed as 
death upon her; her high bulwarks concealed her decks; nothing 
was to be seen stirring along the whole length of the shapely, beau- 
tiful, visionary fabric that, as we left her slowly veering away upon 
our quarter, looked to lose the substance of her form, as though 
through the gradual absorption of the light her own white canvas 
made by the clearer and icy radiance of the soaring moon. 

“To think, now,” said I, “ of the thunder of adamantine lips con- 
cealed within the silence of that heap of swimming faintness ! How 
amazing the change from the exquisite repose she suggests to the 
fierce crimson blaze, and headlong detonations of a broadside flash- 
ing up the dark land, and dying out miles away in a sullen roar. 
But, d’ye know. Miss Jennings, I shall grow poetical if I do not light 
another cigar? Women should encourage men to smoke. Nothing 
keeps them quieter.” 

We exchanged a few words with Captain Finn, who, together with 
the mate, was keeping a bright lookout, and then resumed our walk; 
and, in a quiet chat that was ended only by a small bell on the fore- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


49 


castle announcing the hour of ten by four chimes, Miss Laura gave 
me the story of my cousin’s introduction to her family, described 
the marriage, talked to me about Melbourne and her home there, 
with more to the same purpose, all very interesting to me, though 
it would make the merest parish gossip in print. Her mother was 
dead ; her father was a hearty man of sixty, who had emigrated 
years before in dire poverty, “ as you will suppose,” said she, “ when 
I tell you that he was the son of a dissenting minister, who had a 
family of twelve children, and who died without leaving money 
enough to pay for his funeral.” Mr. Jennings had made a fortune 
by squatting, but he had lost a considerable sum within the past 
few years by stupid speculation ; and as Miss Laura said this, I could 
see — by hearing her (to use a Paddyism) — the pout of her lip ; for, 
bright as the moonlight was, the silver of it blended with the golden 
tint of her hair without defining any feature of her clearly, saving 
her eyes, in which the beam of the planet would sparkle like a dia- 
mond whenever she raised them to my face. She told me that her 
father was very proud that his daughter should become a lady of 
title, and yet he opposed the marriage, too. In short, he saw that 
Wilfrid’s mind was not as sound as it should be, though he never 
could point to any act or speech to justify his misgivings. But this 
was intelligible ; for, to speak of my cousin as I remembered him in 
earlier times, the notion you got that he was not straight-headed, as 
I have before said, was from his face, and the suspicion lay but dully 
in one, so rational was his behavior, so polished, and often intellect- 
ual his talk, till on a sudden it was sharpened into conviction on 
your hearing there was insanity in his mother’s family. 

“ What had Lady Monson to say to your father’s misgivings ?” I 
inquired. 

“ She insisted upon marrying him. He was wonderfully fond of 
her, Mr. Monson.” 

“ And she ?” 

I saw her give her head a little shake, but she made no reply. 
Perhaps she considered that this trip we had started on sufficiently 
answered the question. She said, after a brief pause : “ I myself 
thought my father a great deal too critical in his estimate of Sir 
Wilfrid. No one talked more delightfully than your cousin. He 
was a favorite with everybody whom he met at Melbourne. He was 
fresh from his travels, and was full of entertaining stories and shrewd 
observations ; and then, again, he had much to say about European 
capitals, of English university life, of English society. You will not 


50 


AN OCEAN TJIAGEDY. 


need me to tell you that we Colonials have little weaknesses in re- 
gard to lords and ladies, and to the doings of high life, from which 
people in England are quite exempt, and for the having which I fear 
we are slightly sneered at and a good deal wondered at.” 

I caught the sparkle of her lifted eye. 

“And pray. Miss Jennings,” said I, “ what would your papa think 
if he were to know that you had embarked on what I must still take 
the liberty of calling a very queer voyage ?” 

“ Oh,” she cried, almost hysterically, “ don’t ask me what he would 
think of what I am doing ! What will be his thoughts when he 
gets the news of what Henrietta has done?” 

She turned her head away from me, and kept it averted long 
enough to make me suspect that there was a tear in her eye. It 
was then that a sailor forward struck the forecastle bell four times. 

“ Ten o’clock,” she exclaimed, knowing as an ocean traveller how 
to interpret sea time. “ Good-night, Mr. Monson.” 

I handed her down the companion -steps, and went to my own 
cabin, and was presently in my bunk ; but it was after seven bells 
(half-past eleven) before I fell asleep. 

The breeze had freshened, had drawn apparently more yet to the 
northward, and the yacht, having hauled it a bit now that we were 
out of the Solent, was leaning over a trifle, with a sputtering and 
frisky snapping of froth along her bends, and a quiet moaning sound- 
ing down into her heart out of the hollows of her canvas, while an 
occasional creak breaking from one knew not what part of the struct- 
ure hinted at a taut drag of tacks and sheets, though there was no 
motion in the water, over whose surface our keel slided as steadily 
as a sleigh over a snow-covered plain. 

It was one thing on top of another, I suppose ; the fancies put 
into me by the oddness of this adventure ; the memory of the long 
gun forward ; Wilfrid’s tragic intentions, the darker to my mind 
because it was so easy for me to see how grief, wrath, a sense of 
dishonor, bitter injury, with impulses not imaginable by me which 
every recurrence to the motherless little baby at home would visit 
him with, had quickened in him of late the deadly seminal principle 
that circulated in his blood. Then, again, there was Miss Laura’s 
beauty, if beauty be the proper term to express a combination of 
physical charms which a brief felicitous sentence, like a single line 
from some old poet, would better convey than fifty pages of descrip- 
tion ; her conversation ; her sympathy with the motive of this trip ; 
her apparent heedlessness as to the time to be occupied by it ; her 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


51 


indifference as to the magnitude of the programme that Wilfrid’s 
resolution to recover his wife might end in framing if Table Bay 
should prove but a starting point — I say it was one thing on top of 
another ; and all reflections and considerations being rendered acute 
by the spirit of life oue now felt in the yacht, and that awakened the 
most dormant or puzzled faculty to the perception that it was all grim, 
downright earnest, small wonder that I should have lain awake until 
half-past eleven. Indeed, that I should have snatched a wink of sleep 
that flrst blessed night is a mystery only to be partially resolved by 
reflecting that I was young, heedless, “ unencumbered,” as they say, a 
lover of adventure, and in no sense dissatisfied by the company I 
found myself among. 


52 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER V. 

LONG-TOM. 

When I awoke the morning was streaming a windy light through 
the port-hole over my bnnk. I lay a few minutes watching my coat 
and other suspended garments swinging against the bulkhead, and 
listening to the creaking and groaning of partitions and strong fast- 
enings, and to a muffled humming sound like the distant continuous 
roll of a drum mixed with a faint seething that sent one’s fancy to 
the shingle of the English shore, and to the panting respiration of 
the recoiling breaker upon it, and then I guessed that there was a 
fresh breeze blowing. 

I tumbled out of bed, and stood a while, partly with a notion 
of making sure of my legs and partly to discover if I was likely to 
be sea-sick. Finding myself happily sound in all ways, I drew on 
some clothing and looked out. Wilfrid’s melancholy man sat at the 
cabin table, leaning his head upon his elbow, with his fingers pene- 
trating the black plaster of hair over his brow, so that he presented 
a very dejected and disordered appearance. I called to him ; he 
looked in my direction with a wandering eye, struggled to get up, 
put his hand upon his stomach with an odd smile, and sat again. I 
entered the cabin to see what ailed the fellow. 

“ What’s the matter ?” said I : “ Sick ?” 

He turned his hollow, yellow face upon me, and I saw that he was 
in liquor. 

“ It’s here, sir,” he exclaimed, pointing with an inebriated fore- 
finger to the lower button of his waistcoat. “ It’s a feelin’, sir, as if 
I was a globe, sir, with gold and silver fishes a-swimming round and 
round, and poking of their noses against me to get out.” 

He spoke respectfully, but thickly, with sundry little feints at ris- 
ing, as though very sensible that he should not be sitting while I 
stood. 

“ Try a dose of brandy,” said I, satirically. 

“ Do you think it will help me, sir ?” he inquired, pulling his fin- 
gers out of his hair and clasping his hands upon his waistcoat, while 
bis lips went twisting into an intoxicated grin on one side of his 


AN OCEAN TRAC ED Y. 


53 


nose, as it looked. “ I will try it, Mr. Monson, sir. There’s a some- 
thing here as wants settling, sir. I never w'as partial to the hocean, 
sir.” 

He was proceeding, but just then the second steward came below, 
on which I quitted the melancholy man, ordered a cold salt-water bath 
and a hot cup of coffee, and was presently on deck. It was a windy- 
looking morning, the sky high, gray, compacted, with here and there 
a dark curl of scud in chase of some bald lump of sulphur-colored 
cloud blowing away to leeward like the first ball of powder-smoke 
from a cannon’s mouth ere the wind has had time to shred it. The 
water was green, a true Channel sea with the foam of the curled 
ridges dazzling out in times to the touch of a wet, pale beam of sun- 
shine dropping in a lance of light in some breathless moment through 
one of the dim blue lines that here and there veined the dulness 
aloft. There was no land to be seen ; the haze of the sea-line ran 
the water into the sky, and the green of the horizon went blending 
into the soft grayness of the heavens till it looked all one with a 
difference of color only. 

The yacht was bowling through it at a noble pace ; the wind sat 
as it should for such a craft as the Bride; the sea had quartered 
her and swept in hillocks of foam along her lustrous bends, sending 
an impulse to her floating rushes with every pale boiling of it to her 
frame, and the sputter and creaming all about her bows, and the 
swirl of the snow over the lee-rail, and the milk-white race of wake 
rising and falling, fan -shaped astern, prismatic with the glint of 
chips and bubbles and feathers of spume swept out of the giddiness 
by the rush of the wind, might have made you think yourself aboard 
a ship of a thousand tons. Upon my word, it was as though the Bride 
had got the scent and knew that the Shark was not far distant. 
Finn was not sparing her. He was to windward, close beside the 
wheel as I emerged, and I knew he watched me while I stood a mo- 
ment in the hatch looking from the huge thunderous hollow of the 
main-sail to the yawn of the big square-sail they had clapped upon 
her with the whole square top-sail atop of ^7, top-gallant sail stowed, 
but the jibs yearning from their sheets taut as fiddle-strings, as though 
they would bodily uproot the timber and iron to which they were 
belayed. 

Something of the exhilaration of a real chase came into one with 
the glad roaring aloft and the saw-like spitting at the cut-water, and 
the sullen crash of the arching billow repulsed by the cleaving bow ; 
and it was the instinct in me, I suppose, due to my early training 


54 


AN OCEAN TKAGEDV. 


and recollection of the long pursuit of more than one polacre and 
nimble-heeled schooner flush to the hatches with a living ebony 
cargo that made me send a look sheer over the bows in search of 
some shining quarry there. 

There were three or four coasters in a huddle on the weather- 
beam, their outlines sharp, but their substance of a dingy black 
against the yellowish glare of light over the water that way, as 
though the east were finding reflection in it ; and to leeward, a mile 
off, a full-rigged sailing ship on a bowline bound up Channel, and 
plunging her round bows with clumsy viciousness into the green hol- 
lows with a frequent lift of white water to above the cathead, where 
it blew in a storm of crystals into the head-canvas. 

“ Good-morning, captain.” 

“Good-morning, sir,” answered Finn, knuckling his forehead in 
the old-fashioned style. “ Nice little breeze of wind, sir.” 

“ Ay ; one could pray for nothing better,” said I, crossing over to 
him. “You’ve got a fine craft here, certainly, captain ; no stint of 
beam, and bulwarks stout and tall enough to serve the purpose of a 
pirate. And how finely she rounds forward to the eyes ! Holloa ! 
getting ready with your gun so soon ?” 

“ No, sir, only a-cleaning of him,” he answered, with a grin. 

They had removed the tarpaulin, and there stood the long piece, 
with a couple of seamen hard at work furbishing it up. 

“ D’ye think,” said I, making a step or two towards the rail to 
bring us out of ear-shot of the fellow who was standing at the wheel, 
“ that Sir Wilfrid really means to let fly at the Sharks should we 
overhaul her, if she refuses to heave to ?” 

“ I don’t doubt it, sir.” 

“ But how about your crew ? Will they be willing, think you, to 
fire into a vessel that’s a yacht like their own ship, that hails from 
the same port, and whose people may number among them acquaint- 
ances — old shipmates of your own men ?” 

“ They’ll obey orders, sir,” said he, quietly, with an air of caution 
in his long face. 

“ Suppose it should come to our having to board the Shark, cap- 
tain, and she shows fight — are you going to get your men to hazard 
their lives in the face of the pacific articles they, I presume, have 
signed ?” 

“ It’ll never come to a fight, Mr. Monson,” he responded, “though 
I don’t say it may not come to our having to fire at the vessel to stop 
her; for, you see, if the colonel commands Fidler to keep all fast and 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


55 


take no notice of us, there’ll be nothin’ for him but to obey ; while 
stop her we must, do ye see, sir? But as to fighting — ” he shook 
his head. “No, sir; when the time’s come for boarding they’ll be 
willing to let us walk quietly over the side, no matter how much 
they may consider their feelings injured by our shooting at ’em. In 
short, it’s like this : ne’er a man aboard the Shark but knows what 
the colonel and her ladyship’s gone and done. A good many, I 
dessay, are husbands themselves, not to speak of their being Eng» 
lishmen, and ye may take ne’er a hand of ’em, from Fidler down, 
is going to resist Sir Wilfrid’s stepping on board to demand his 
own.” 

“You may be right,” said I; “ ’tis bard to say, though. Do our 
crew know the errand we are on ?” 

“ Bound to it, sir. In fact, the shipping of that there gun wouldn’t 
allow the job to remain a secret. But the Shark was away first; 
and if all Southampton had got talking of our intention, it couldn’t 
have signified — so far as consarns, I mean, their guessing at it aboard 
the Shark.''* 

“You must have pushed your equipment forward with wonderful 
expedition.” 

“Yes, sir; we worked day and night. Of course, we was all 
ready for sea; but there would be many things a-wanting for what 
might turn out a six or seven thousand mile run, with ne’er a stop- 
page along the whole road of it.” 

My eye was just then taken by something that glittered upon the 
main-mast, within reach of a man’s uplifted arm. I peered, imagin- 
ing it to be a little plate with an inscription upon it commemorating 
something that Wilfrid might have deemed worthy of a memorial. 
I caught Finn grinning. 

‘^’ye see what it is, sir?” said he. 

I looked again and shook my head. He walked to the mast and 
I followed him, and now I saw that it was a handsome five-guinea 
piece, obviously of an old date — but it was too high to distinguish 
the impress clearly — secured by a couple of little staples, which 
gripped without piercing or wounding it. 

“That piece of money,” said Finn, “is for the first man that 
sights the Shark." 

“ Ha !” I exclaimed, “ an old whaling practice. My cousin has not 
viewed the world for nothing.”// 

It was but a trifiing thing, yet in its way it was almost as hard a 
bit of underscoring of my cousin’s resolution as the long, grinning 


56 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


})ioce they were cleaning' forward, or the stand of arms against the 
bulkhead below. 

“ What’s the pace, captain ?” 

“ A full ten, sir, by the last heave of the log.” 

I fell a whistling — for it was grand sailing, surely — with a lift of 
my eye to the top-gallant sail, that lay stowed in a snow-white streak, 
with a proper rnan-of-war’s bunt amidships on the slender black 
yard. 

“ Well, sir,” said Finn, taking it upon himself to interpret rny 
glance, “ I know the Bride, and I’m acquainted with a good many 
vessels which ain’t the least bit in the world like her, and my no- 
tion’s this, that a craft’ll do no more than she can do. I’ve hove the 
log to reefed canvas, and I’ve hove it in the same wind to whole 
sails and found a loss. No use of burying what you want to keep 
afloatv I might set that there little top-gallant sail, without enjoying 
a hinch of way more out of it. Then what ud be the good of 
straining the spars?” 

“ But you’ll be setting stun-sails, I suppose, when a right ehance 
for running them aloft occurs ?” 

“ Ay, sir. There’s the boom irons all ready ; but my notion is, 
in a vessel of this sort, that it’s best to keep your stun-sail booms 
out of sight till your anchors are stowed. Once out of soundings, 
and then let a man cut what capers he likes.” 

As he said this, up rose my cousin’s long body through the com- 
panion-hatch. He stood a little, looking about him in his short- 
sighted way, but with an expression of satisfaction upon his face 
that gave a new character to it. I saw him rub his hands while he 
grinned to the swift, salt rush of the wind. He caught sight of me 
and instantly approached. 

“This will do! this will do, Charles!” he cried, grasping my hand. 
“Don’t spare her, captain. These are slants to be made the most 
of. By Heaven, but it makes a new man of me to see such a sight 
as thatP'' pointing to the torrent that was roaring past to leeward. 

He stared with a sort of pathetic eagerness at the vessels which 
we were passing as though they had their anchors down, afterwards 
shading his eyes for another long yearning look over either bow. 

“ It is fine, though ! it is fine, though !” he muttered, with the 
spirit of an unreasonable exhilaration working strong in every feat- 
ure. “ What is it, captain — twelve ?” Finn gave him the figure. 
“And what would be the BKarlds pace, supposing her yonder?” 

“ Not all ours. Sir Wilfrid, not all ours,” responded Finn, “though 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


57 


it is a line sailing breeze, your honor. A craft would have to be a 
sawed-off-square consarn not to wash handsomely along this morn- 
ing, sir.” 

“ How have you slept, Wilfrid ?” said I. 

“ Well,” he answered. “ But I say, Charles, what do you think ?” 
said he, with a sudden, boyish air, that startled me with its suggest- 
ion of stupidity in him. “ Muffin is drunk.” 

“ Drunk !” cried I ; “ but who the deuce is Muffin ?” forgetting 
the name. 

“ Why, my man,” he answered ; “ my valet. It’s very odd. I 
thought at first it was sea-sickness. He’s been crying; the tears 
streamed down his cheeks. He begs to be set ashore, and swears 
that if he should choke with one of the fishes that are swimming 
about in him, his mother and two sisters would have to go to the 
Union. Do you think he’s mad?” 

“ Drunk and sea-sick, too,” said I. “ Has he not been away with 
you on a yachting trip before ?” 

“No. This is a handsome vessel, don’t you think, Charles?” he 
exclaimed, breaking from the subject as though it had never been in 
his mind, and following on his question with a curious fluttering 
smile and that trembling of the lids I have before described ; though 
his gaze steadied miraculously as they rested upon the gun the fel- 
lows were at work upon, and a shadow came into his face which 
was good as telling me that I need not respond to his inquiry, as 
his thoughts were already elsewhere. 

“ Let’s go and have a look at my cannon,” said he, with the same 
old boyish manner he had discovered a minute or two earlier. 

We walked forward ; the decks had been some time before 
washed down and were sand dry, white as a tree newly stripped of 
its bark, with a glitter all about them of the crystals of salt. The 
rigging was everywhere neatly coiled down ; whatever was of brass 
shone as though it reflected a sunbeam; no detail but must have 
satisfied the most exacting nautical eye with an indication of frigate- 
like neatness, cleanliness, finish, and fore-and-aft discipline. The 
Bride, after the manner of many yachts of those days, carried a 
galley on deck abaft her foremast. I peeped in as I passed, and 
took notice of a snug little interior, brilliant with polished cooking 
vessels, and as clean and sweet as a dairy. A few of the sailors 
were standing about it waiting (as I took it) for the cook to furnish 
the messes with their breakfast. They had the air of a rough, 
resolute set of men, with something of the inspiration of the yacht- 


58 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


ing business, perhaps, in their manner of saluting Sir Wilfrid and 
myself, but with little of the aspect of the seafarer of the pleasure 
vessel of these times. They were bushy- whiskered, hard-a-weather 
fellows for the most part, with one odd face among them as yellow 
and wrinkled as the skin of a decayed lemon. 

I asked Wilfrid carelessly if any of his crew had sailed with him 
before. He answered that a few of them had ; but that the others 
had declined to start on a voyage to the end of which Finn was 
unable to furnish a date, so that the captain had made up the com- 
plernent in a hurry out of the best hands be could find cruising 
about ashore. So this, thought I, accounts for the absence of that 
uniformity of apparel one looks for among the crews of yachts ; yet 
all the sailors I had taken notice of were dressed warmly in very 
good clean nautical clothes, though I protest it made one think of 
the old picaroon and yarns of the Spanish Main to glance at one or 
two of the dry, tough, burnt seawardly chaps, who concealed their 
pipes and dragged a curl upon their foreheads to us as we passed 
them. 

Wilfrid stared at his eighteen-pounder as though he were some 
lad viewing a toy cannon he had just purchased. He bent close to 
it in his near-sighted way, and looked it all over while he asked me 
what I thought of it. I saw the two fellows who were still at work 
upon it chew hard on the junks in their cheek-bones in their strug- 
gle to keep their faces. 

“ Why,” said I, “ it seems to me a very good sort of gun, Wilfrid, 
and a thing, when fired, I’d rather stand behind than in front of.” 

“I should have had two of them,” said he, with a momentary 
darkening of his looks to the rising in him of some vexing memory, 
pointing as he spoke to the bow ports, “ but Finn thought one piece 
of such a calibre enough at this end of the vessel, and it would have 
been idle to mount a stern-chaser ; for what we want to fire at — 
should it come to it — we can always manage to keep yonder,” nod- 
ding in the direction of the jib-boom. 

I had no mind to talk to him in the presence of the two fellows, 
one of whom I would see screw up his eye like the twist of a gim- 
let at us while he went on polishing; so I stepped into the head 
to take a view of the shear of the cut-water as it drove knife-like 
into each green freckled and glass-smooth side of surge rolling trans- 
versely from us ere shattering it into a snow-storm; but the bul- 
warks being too tall to enable me to see all that I looked for, I sprang 
on to the bowsprit and laid out to the jib-boom end, which I jock- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


59 


eyed, holding on to a stay and beckoning to Wilfrid to follow ; but 
lie shook his head with a loud call to me to mind what I was about. 

One may talk of the joy of a swift gallop on horseback when the 
man and the animal fit like hand and glove, when all is smooth run- 
ning with a gallant leap now and again ; but what is a flight of that 
sort compared with the sensations you get by striding the jib-boom 
of such a schooner as the Bride and feeling her airily leap with you 
over the liquid hollows which yawn right under you, green as the 
summer leaf or purple as the violet for a moment or two, before the 
smiting stem fills the thunderous chasm with the splendor of a cloud 
of boiling froth ! It was a picture to have detained me an hour, so 
noble was the spectacle of the leaning yacht forever coming right at 
me as it seemed, the rounds of her canvas whitened into marble 
hardness with the yearn and lean of the distended cloths to a quar- 
ter of the sea where hung a brighter tincture of sky through some 
tenuity of the eastern grayness behind which the sun was soaring. 
One felt a life and soul in the little ship, in every floating bound 
she made, in every sliding blow of the bow that sent a vast, smooth 
curl of billow to windw^ard for the shrill-edged blast to transform 
into a very cataract of stars and diamonds and prisms ! Lovely be- 
yond description was the courtesying of her gilt figure-head and the 
refulgence of the gold lines all about it to the milk-white softness 
that seethed to the hawse-pipes. 

I made my way inboard and said to Wilfrid, who stood waiting 
for me, “She’s a beauty. She should achieve your end for you if 
it is Table Bay only you are thinking of. But yonder great hori- 
zon !” I exclaimed, motioning with my hand. “ We are still in 
the narrow sea — yet look how far it stretches ! Think then of the 
Atlantic circle.” 

“We shall overhaul her!” he exclaimed, quickly, with a gesture 
that made an instant’s passion of his way of speaking. “Come 
along aft, Charles, and stump it a bit for an appetite. Breakfast 
can’t be far off now.” 

Miss Laura did not make her appearance until we were at table. 
I feared that the Bride's lively dance had proved too much for her, 
and glanced aft for the maid that I might ask how her mistress did. 
Indeed, though on deck one gave no heed to the rolling and plung- 
ing of the yacht, the movements were rendered mighty sensible in 
the cabin by the swift, often convulsive oscillations of lamps and 
swing trays, by the sliding of articles of the breakfast equipment in 
the fiddles, by the monotonous ticking - like noise of doors upon 


60 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


their hooks, the slope of the cabin floor, sounds like the groanings of 
strong men in pain breaking in upon the ear from all parts, and, 
above all, by sudden lee lurches which veiled the port-holes in green 
water, that sobbed madly till it flashed, with a shriek and a long, dim 
roar, off the weeping glass lifted by the weather-roll to the dull, gray 
glare of the day. 

But we had scarcely taken our seats when the girl arrived, and 
she brought such life and light and fragrance in her mere aspect to 
the table that it was as though some rich and beautiful flower of a 
perfume sweetened yet by the coolness of dew had been placed 
among us. She had slept well, she said, but her maid was ill and 
helpless. “And where is Muffin?” she demanded. 

“ He’s lying down, miss,” said the head steward. “ He says his 
blood-wessels is that delicate he’s got to be werry careful indeed.” 

Wilfrid leaned across to her and said, in a low voice that the 
steward might not hear him, but with a boyish air that I had found 
odd and even absurd strong in him again, “ Laura, my dear, imagine ! 
Muffin is drunk'"' he broke into a strong, noisy laugh. “ Weepingly 
drunk, Laura; talks of himself as a globe of fish, and, indeed,” he 
added, with a sudden recovery of his gravity, “ so queer outside all 
inspirations of the bottle that I’m disposed to think him mad.” 
Again he uttered a loud ha ! ha ! peering at me with his short sight 
to see if I was amused. 

A look of concern entered Miss Jennings’s face, but quickly left 
it, subdued, as I noticed, by an effort of will. 

“ I was afraid that Muffin would not suit you,” she exclaimed, 
quietly. “ I told you so, I remember. Those yellow, hollow men are 
miserable sailors. He has all good qualities us a valet on shore, 
but — ” she was proceeding when he interrupted her. 

“ I say, Laura, isn’t this breeze magnificent, eh ? Think, my dear 
— ten knots an hour! We are sweeping through it as though we 
were in tow of a comet. Why, if the devil himself were ahead, we 
should overhaul him at this pace.” 

He dropped his knife and fork as though to rub his hands — an 
action common to him when gratified — but his face darkened, a 
wild expression came into it wdth a sudden savage protrusion of his 
projecting under lip to the bitter sneer of the upper one ; he .fell 
again to eating in a hurry, breathing short, and masticating viciously 
with now and again a shake of the head, until all at once, ere he 
bad half made an end of what was before him, he pushed his plate 
violently away and lay back in his chair, with his arms tightly folded 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


61 


upon his breast and his gaze intently fixed downward, in a way to 
make me think of that aunt of his whom the old earl had pointed 
out to his father as she paced the greensward between two keepers. 

With the easiest air imaginable, though it was impossible that she 
could effectually blind to my sight the mingled expression of worry 
and dismay in her eyes as she directed them at me, Miss Jennings, 
making the breakfast upon the table her text, prattled about the 
food one gets on board ship, seizing, as it seemed to me, the first 
commonplace topic she could think of. 

I took an askant view of the stewards to see if they noticed Sir 
Wilfrid, but could find nothing to interpret in their wooden, waiting 
faces. After a little he seemed to wake up, coming back to his 
mind, as it were, with a long, tremulous sigh, and a puzzled look 
round at the table as though wondering whether he had breakfasted 
or not. Miss Jennings and I chatted commonplaces. He called for 
a cup of tea, and then, after listening with plenty of intelligence in 
his manner to a little experience I was relating to Miss Laura con- 
cerning the recovery of a captain’s pig that had been washed over- 
board in a sudden squall, he described a gale of wind he had en- 
countered off Agulhas while on a voyage to India, during which the 
cuddy front was stove in, and an immense sow and her young, along 
with a fine specimen of an English cart-horse and a cow, washed 
bodily aft and swept in thunder down the broad staircase in the 
saloon that conducted to the berths and living room for what were 
then termed the steerage passengers. No story was ever more 
graphically related. He described the panic among the passengers, 
the horrible concert produced by the screams of the pigs, and the 
terrified moaning and bellowing of the cow, the uproar of the cart- 
horse’s plunging hoofs against the resonant bulkheads, mingled with 
the shrieks of the people who were in bed and imagined the ship to 
be already under water; I say he described all this so well, with so 
keen an appreciation of the^humor, as well as of the horror of the 
scene, with a delivery so free from all excitement, that it seemed 
almost incredible he should be the same man that just now sat fixed 
in the posture of a melancholy madman with a face, as I might have 
thought, dark with the shadow' of eclipsed reason. 

Breakfast ended, he quitted the table to fetch his pipe. 

“ I had better have come without a man, after all,” said he, laugh- 
ing; “one condition oLsea-going should be that a fellow must help 
himself; and upon my word, it comes to it, no matter how many 
servants he brings with him. ’Tis the same ashore, too, after all. 


62 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


It is the mistress who does most of the waiting;” and thus pleas- 
antly speaking, he went to his cabin. 

Miss Laura made as if to rise. 

“ An instant, Miss Jennings,” said I. “ I have seen nothing of 
Wilfrid of late years. You, on the other hand, have been a good 
deal thrown with him during the last three months. Tell me, then, 
what you think of his manner and language just now — that behav- 
ior, I mean, from which he started, so to speak, into perfect ration- 
ality.” 

“ It was a sort of mood,” she answered, speaking low, “ that I 
have noticed in him, but never before saw so defined.” 

“ Madness,” said I, with a shake of the head. 

“The shadow of a passing mood of madness,” said she. “Was 
he on deck with you before breakfast ?” 

I answered, “ Yes.” 

“ Were his spirits good ?” 

“ Irrationally good, I thought. It was the sight of the fiying 
schooner, no doubt, the picture of the running seas, the sense of 
headlong speed, with the. black grin of the forecastle gun to quicken 
his wild craving into a very delirium of expectation and hope. But 
that kind of glee is quite as alarming as his melancholy.” 

“ Yes, but you will find his melancholy strong as his spirits seem 
high. Do I make myself understood, Mr. Monson ?” 

“Quite. One moment, you mean, he is looking down upon this 
extraordinary plan of his — this goose-chase, I must call it, with a 
bounding heart from the edge of a chasm; the next he is at the 
very bottom of the pit, gazing upward in an anguish of dejection. 
The deeper the precipice, the gloomier the depth where he brings 
up. Certainly I understand you. Miss Jennings. But here is now 
a consideration that is bothering me,” I continued, sending a look 
aft, and up at the open skylight and around to make sure that we 
were unheard. “I am his cousin. As^his associate in this voyage 
I have a right to regard myself as his best friend, for the time being, 
anyway. Now, what is my duty in the face of a condition of mind 
whose capriciousness fills it with menace? He brings me here as 
his right-hand man to help him, but to help him in or to what? 
I seem to understand his programme, yet I cannot render it intelli- 
gible to my own common-sense. Many might think me ‘wanting’ 
myself to be here at all ; but I will not go into that ; what I mean 
is, is it not my duty to hinder him if possible from prosecuting a 
chase which, in my humble judgment, by continuing to irritate him 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


63 


with the disappointment of hope, may end in rendering organic 
what is now, let us pray, merely functional and fugitive ?” 

“You may try, but I do not think you will succeed,” she ex- 
claimed. “Indeed,” she cried, raising her voice, but immediately 
and nervously subduing it, “ I hope you will not try, for it is not 
hard to foresee what must follow. You will merely make his reso- 
lution more stubborn by rendering it angrier than it is, and then 
there might come a coolness between you — indeed, something worse 
than coolness on his side ; for in such minds as your cousin’s it is 
impossible to imagine what dangerous ideas opposition may pro- 
voke.” 

I bowed in recognition of the truth of this, admiring in her a 
quality of sagacity that, to the fancy, at all events, of a young man, 
as I then was, would gather a new excellence from her graces. She 
looked at me with a tremble of light in her gaze that vexed its 
serenity. 

“ Besides, Mr. Monson, we must consider Henrietta.” 

“ It is natural you should think wholly of her,” said I. 

“Not wholly. But this pursuit may end in rescuing her from 
Colonel Hope-Kennedy. It gives her a future chance. But you 
would have her husband sit quietly at home.” 

“ Well, not exactly,” I interrupted. 

“ What would you have him do ?” 

“ Get a divorce,” said I. 

“ He won’t do that,” she exclaimed. “ Marriage in his sight is a 
sacrament. Do not you know his views, Mr. Monson ?” 

“You see, I have long lost sight of him.” 

“ Well, I know he would not seek a divorce. He would be mad 
indeed,” she cried, flushing to her brow, “ to give my sister the lib- 
erty she wants, and Colonel Hope-Kennedy — ” She faltered and 
stopped, biting her underlip, with the hot emotion which mounted 
to her face imparting a sudden air of womanly maturity to her girl- 
ish beauty, while her breast rose and fell to her ireful breathing. 
“ This is no mad pursuit,” she continued, after a brief pause, speak- 
ing softly. “ What is there unreasonable in a man’s determination 
to follow his wife that he may come as swiftly as the ship, the 
coach, the railway will permit him between her and a life of shame 
and remorse and misery ?” 

As she spoke my cousin arrived, holding a great meerschaum pipe 
in his hand. She at once rose and left the table, with a faint smile 
^t me, and a glance on top of it that was as eloquent as a whisper 


64 


AN OCEAN TEAGEDY. 


of regret at liaving been betrayed into warmth. Well, thought I, 
you are a sweet little woman, and it is highly probable that before 
I have been a week in your company I shall be head over ears in 
love with you. But for all that, you fair and artless creature, I don’t 
agree with you in your views of this chase. Suppose Wilfrid re- 
captures his wife, what is he going to do with her? She is not a 
lunatic ; he cannot lock her up — but I broke oS to the approach of 
my cousin, fetched my pipe, and went on deck with him. 

After all, it was about time I should now see that though we 
might shape a course for the yacht, and give the wind the name of 
the compass points whence it blew. Chance was our skipper and 
helmsman, and the regions into which he was leading us as blind 
and thick as smoke. Throughout life and in all things it is the 
same, of course; we sail with a fog that stands wall-like at the bows 
of our intentions, receding inch by inch with our advance, and leav- 
ing the water clear on either hand and astern, but ahead it remains 
forever as thick as mud in a wineglass. Anyhow, the chase was a 
sort of consolation to Wilfrid ; it had Miss Laura’s approval, and 
there was hope enough to be got out of it, according to her, to render 
her trustful. But for my part I could view it only as a yachting 
excursion, and I particularly felt this when I stepped on deck with 
my cousin, spite of my quite recent talk with his sweet sister-in-law, 
and felt the sweep of the strong wind, and caught the roar of the 
divided waters sounding a small thunder upon the ears after the 
comparative calm of the breakfast-table below. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


65 


CHAPTER VI. 

FINN TESTS THE CREw’s SIGHT. 

Little of interest happened at the outset. There, were but three 
of us for company ; our ship was a small one, and the inner life of 
it a monotonous round of eating, drinking, smoking, of taking the 
wheel, of stumping the quarter-deck, of keeping a lookout, of scrub- 
bing and polishing, and making and shortening sail ; while outside 
there was nothing but weather and sea ; so that in a very short time 
I had lapsed into the old o^ban trick of timing the passage of the 
hours by meals. 

But that I may not approach in a staggering or disjointed way 
the huddle of astonishments which then lay many leagues’ distance 
past the gleam of the sea-line towards which our bowsprit was point- 
ing, I will enter here in a sort of log-book fashion a few of the in- 
terests, features, and spectacles of this early passage of our singular 
excursion. 

The fresh wind ran us well down Channel. Hour after hour the 
Bride was driving the green seas into foam before her, and there 
was a continuous, fretful heaving of the log to Wilfrid’s feverish de- 
mands, until, I think, before we were two days out, the very souls of 
the crew had grown to loathe the cry of “Turn !” and the rattle of 
the reel. 

That same morning — the morning, I mean, that I have dealt with 
in the last chapter — after Wilfrid and I had been smoking a little 
while under the lee of the tall bulwark, which the wind struck and 
recoiled from, leaving a space of calm in the clear above it to the 
height of a man’s head, my cousin, who had been chatting with the 
utmost intelligence on a matter so remote from the object of this 
chase as a sale of yearlings which he had attended a few weeks be- 
fore, sprang to his feet with the most abrupt breaking away imagi- 
nable from what he was talking about, and called to Captain Finn, 
who was coming leisurely aft from the neighborhood of the galley, 
with a sailorly eye upturned at the canvas, and a roll of his short 
legs that made you think he would feel more at horpe pu all fours, 
5 


66 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“Finn,” cried Wilfrid, “ there is no one on the lookout!” and he 
pointed with his long, awkward arm at the top-gallant yard. 

“ Why, hardly yet, sir,” began Finn. 

“Hardly interrupted Wilfrid; “my orders were, day and 

night from the hour of our departure.” 

“Beg your honor’s pardon, Fm sure, sir,” said Finn. “I didn’t 
quite take ye as meaning to be literal. Five days’ start, you know, 
Sir Wilfrid — ” 

“What is that to cried my cousin, impetuously; “it’s the 

unexpected you’ve got to make ready for at sea, man. Figure some- 
thing having gone wrong with the Shark — her masts overboard — a 
leak — fire; anyway,” he cried, with the heat of a man who means 
to have his will, but who grows suddenly sensible of the weakness of 
his arguments, “ have a fellow stationed aloft day and night. D’ye 
hear me, Finn ?” 

“Certainly I hear you. Sir Wilfrid.’^ 

He knuckled his forehead, and was in the act of moving away to 
give directions, when my cousin stopped him. 

“ No use sending blind men aloft, Finn — mere gogglers like my- 
self, worse luck! You must find out the men with eyes in their 
heads in this ship.” 

Finn hung in the wind, sending a dull rolling glance at the five- 
guinea piece nailed to the main-mast. “ If it worn’t for that,” he 
exclaimed, pointing to it, “ it wouldn’t matter ; but if I pick and 
choose, ’twill be like stirring up the inside of a sty. The men’ll 
argue that the piece of money is for the first man that sights the 
Shark, and they’ll think it hard that a few of them only should be 
selected to stand a lookout aloft ; for it will be but one of ’em that’s 
chosen as can aim the money.” 

“ Very true,” said I. 

“ Confound it, Charles,” cried my cousin, angrily, “ what’ll be the 
good of posting a short-sighted man up there?” 

“All hands. Captain Finn, have got two eyes apiece in their 
heads,” said I. 

“ All, sir,” he answered, after a little reflection, “ saving the mate, 
and he’s got two eyes, too ; only one makes a foul hawse of t’other.” 

“You may take it, Wilfrid,” said I, “that your men are able to 
see pretty much alike.” 

“Is there no way of testing the fellows’ sight?” cried Wilfrid, 
excitedly, with an unnecessary headlong manner about him as though 
Jie ^oqld heave his body along with everjr question he put qx ex- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


67 


clamation he uttered ; “then we could uproot the moles among them. 
Dash me, Finn, if I’m going to let the Shark slip astern of us for 
want of eyesight.” 

The skipper sent a slow, uncertain look around the horizon, evi- 
dently puzzled ; then his face cleared a bit. He went to the weath- 
er-rail and stared ahead, crossed to leeward, and fastened his eyes 
on the sea on the lee bow. Then coming up to windward again he 
hailed a man who was at work upon the top-sail yard doing some- 
thing to one of the stirrups of the foot-rope. 

“Aloft there!” 

“ Holloa 1” 

“ Jump on to the top-gallant yard, and let me know if there’s any- 
thing in sight ahead or on either bow.” 

“ Ay, ay, sir !” 

The fellow got upon the yard, and leaned from it, with one hand 
grasping the tie, while with Ihe other he shaded his eyes, and took a 
long whaling look. His figure was soft and firm as a pencil draw- 
ing against the hard and windy grayness of the heavens, and the rip- 
pling of his trousers to the wind, the yellow streak of his lifted arm, 
naked to the elbow, the inimitable, easy, careless pose of him as he 
swayed to the swift vibrations of the spar on which he stood, with 
the ivory-white curves of the jib and stay-foresail going down past 
him till they were lost forward of the top-sail, that yawned in a 
shadowed hollow which looked the duskier for the gleam of the pin- 
ion of staysail this side of it, made a little sea picture of quiet but 
singular beauty. 

“ Nothing in sight, sir,” he bawled down. Finn raised his hand 
in token that he heard him, and turned to Wilfrid. 

“ Now, sir,” said he, “ something’s bound to be heaving into view 
shortly ahead of us. We might test the men thus : one watch at a 
time ; two men on the top-gallant yard, which can be hoisted with- 
out setting the sail ; four men on the top-sail yard, and two men on 
the foreyard. I’ll send Crimp on to the forecastle to see all’s fair. 
There’s to be no singing out ; the man that sees the sail first is to 
hold up his arm. That’ll test the chaps on the top-gallant yard, who, 
from the height they’re posted at, are bound to see the hobject first ; 
then it’ll come to the top-s’l yard, and then to the foreyard. What 
d’ye say, sir? It’ll take the men off their work, but for not long, 
I reckon, for something’s bound to show soon hereabouts.” 

“ An excellent notion,” shouted Wilfrid, gleefully, all temper in 
liim gone, “ Quick about it^ Finn ; and, see here, there’ll be a crown 


68 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


piece for the man on each yard who’s the first to hold up his 
arm.” 

“ That’ll skin their eyes for ’em,” rumbled Finn, in a half-sup- 
pressed hurricane note, and he went forward, grinning broadly. 

The port watch were mustered ; I heard him explaining ; the cock- 
eyed mate walked sulkily to the forecastle, and took up his place be- 
tween the knight-heads in a sullen posture, his arms folded and his 
eyes turned up. “Away aloft !” There was a headlong rush of men, 
the rigging danced to their springs, and in a few moments every 
yard had its allotted number of lookouts. 

It was not a test to believe in, for the instant an arm on the top- 
gallant yard was brandished the fellows below would know that some- 
thing had hove into view, and the dishonest among them, calculating 
upon its appearance in due course, might flourish their fists before 
their eyes gave them the right to do so. However, Wilfrid looked 
hugely pleased, and you witnessed the one virtue of the test in that. 

bet me a sovereign to ten shillings that the man on the port top- 
gallant yard-arm would be the first to lift his hand. I took him, and 
then naturally found the affair interesting. 

In the midst of this business Miss Jennings arrived, cosily dressed 
in a jacket that fitted her shape, and a little hat that looked to be 
made of beaver curled on one side to a sort of cockade, where a small 
black plume rattled to the wind as I caught her hand and conducted 
her to my chair under the bulwarks. She started when she saw those 
sailors all staring in one direction with the intentness which the in- 
spiration of five shillings would put into the nautical eye. 

“ What is in sight ?” she exclaimed, looking round at Wilfrid with 
a pale face. “ Surely — surely — ” 

I explained, while my cousin, rubbing his hands together and break- 
ing into a loud but scarcely mirthful laugh, asked if she did not think 
it w^as a magnificent idea. 

“ Positively,” she cried, with alarm still bright in her eyes, “ I be- 
lieved at first that the Shark or some vessel like her was in sight. 
But, Wilfrid, when a man climbs up there to look out, will not he 
have a telescope ?” 

“ Yes, by day,” he answered, “ and a night-glass when the dark 
comes.” 

“Then, what good is there in that sort of test?” she inquired. 
“The shortest-sighted man with a telescope at his eye would be able 
to see miles farther than the longest-sighted.” 

^‘Ay,” cried my cousin, “ but a good sight ’ll see farther through 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


69 


a glass tlian a feeble one, and I want to find out who have got the 
good sight among those fellows.” 

I saw her peep askant at me, to gather what I thought of this busi- 
ness. Very clearly, she found nothing but childishness in it. Mean- 
while, Wilfrid kept his large weak eyes fixed upon the two fellows on 
the top-gallant yard. They might have been a couple of birds perched 
on a bough, and he a hungry tomcat watching them. Finn was at 
the wheel, having sent the man who had been steering to join the 
others aloft. The mate, on the forecastle, looked sulkily up ; the 
growling that was going on within him, and his astonishment and 
scorn of the whole proceeding, were inimitably expressed in liis post- 
ure. Twenty minutes passed. I was sick of staring, and filled an- 
other pipe, though without venturing to speak, for the breathless 
intensity of expectation in Wilfrid’s manner, along with the eager, 
aching, straining expression of his face upturned to where the men 
were, was a sort of spell in its way upon one, and I positively felt 
afraid to break the silence. On a sudden the man on the port side 
of the top-gallant yard raised his hand, and in the space of a breath 
afterwards up went the other fellow’s arm. But my cousin had won 
his bet ; he hit his leg a blow, with boyish delight strong in his 
face. 

“ A magnificent test, isn’t it ?” he whispered, as though he feared 
his voice would travel aloft; “now watch the top-sail yard. The 
fellows there haven’t seen the gestures of the chaps above them. 
Another sovereign to ten shillings, Charles, that the outermost man 
to windward will hold up his hand first.” 

I took the bet, and as luck would have it, he won again, for a very 
few minutes after the sail had been descried from the loftiest yard 
the man whom Wilfrid had backed signalled, and then up went the 
arms of the other three, along with the arms of the two fellows who 
were stationed on the foreyard, as though they were being drilled, 
while a rumble of laughter sounded from among a group of the star- 
board watch, who were standing near the galley awaiting the issue 
of the test. 

The hands came down ; the mate set the crew to work ; the fellow 
whose trick it was at the wheel relieved the captain, who walked up 
to us. 

“ That’s what they sighted, sir,” he exclaimed, pointing ahead where 
we could just catch a glimpse of an airy streak of a marble hue, which 
showed only whenever our speeding schooner lifted upon some seeth- 
ing brow' that washed in thunder slantwise to leeward, but which pres- 


'70 


aN ocean tragedy. 


ently enlarged to the proportions of a powerful cutter, apparently a 
revenue-boat, staggering under a press as though in a hurry, steering 
north for an English port. 

Wilfrid’s satisfaction was unbounded; his exuberance of delight 
was something to startle one, seeing that there was nothing whatever 
to justify it. As I looked at him I recalled Miss Laura’s remark as 
to fits of excessive gloom following these irrational soarings of spirits, 
and expected shortly to find him plunged in a mood of fixed black 
melancholy. He told Captain Finn to have the other watch tested 
in the same way before the day was out, and produced fifteen shil- 
lings, ten of which were to go to the two men whom he had backed, 
and half a crown apiece to the fellows on the foreyard. Finn took 
the money with an eye that seemed actually to languish under its 
load of expostulation, but he made no remark. He anticipated, as I 
might, indeed, that fathom after fathom of hoarse forecastle argu- 
ments would attend this distribution, for assuredly the men on the 
foreyard were no more entitled to the money than the others who 
received none. 

“ Now, captain,” cried Wilfrid, “ send the man who first sighted 
that sail yonder aloft at once. Let the foretop-gallant yard be the 
lookout station ; d’ye understand ?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“Call Mufiin.” 

But Mufiin was too ill, or drunk, or both, to appear, so one of the 
stewards was summoned and ordered to bring from Sir Wilfrid’s 
cabin a telescope that he would find in such and such a place. The 
man returned with the glass, a lovely Dollond, silver mounted. 

“ Try it, Charles,” my cousin said to me. 

I pointed it at the cutter, and found the lenses amazingly power- 
ful and brilliant. “ A superb glass, indeed,” said I, returning it to 
him. 

“Now, captain,” said Wilfrid, with that raised look I have before 
referred to, “ I dedicate this glass to the discovery of the Shark.’’^ 
His teeth met in a snap as he spoke the word, and his breathing 
grew labored. “ Let this telescope be carried aloft by that top-gal- 
lant yard man who was the first to lift his hand, and there let it 
remain, passing from sunrise to sunset from hand to hand as the 
lookouts are relieved. Never on any account whatever is it to be 
brought down from that mast-head until the image of the craft we 
want is reflected fair in it. See to this, Finn.” 

“Ay, ay, sir!” responded the captain, with his long face still 


AN OCUaN 'TRAGEDY. 


11 


charged with expostulation, though you saw he would not have dis- 
puted for the value of his wages. 

“ By-and-by,” continued my cousin, “ I’ll give you a night-glass of 
equal power, to be dedicated to the same purpose.” 

“Thank ’ee, Sir Wilfrid; but, your honor” — and here the worthy 
fellow looked nervously from Sir Wilfrid to me — “ am I to under- 
stand, sir, that this here beautiful instrument,” handling it as if it 
were a baby, “ along with t’other which you’re to give me, is to be 
kept aloft day and night, no matter the weather?” 

“ Day and night, no matter the weather,” said Wilfrid, in a sepul- 
chral voice. 

“ Very good, sir ; but I should like to say—” 

“ Now, pray, don’t say anything at all,” interrupted my cousin, 
peevishly; “you’re losing time, Finn. Send that fellow aloft, will 
you ? Gracious Heaven ! Can’t you see it makes one feel desperate 
to understand that there’s nobody on the lookout ?” 

He jumped up and fell to pacing the deck with long, irritable 
strides. Finn, without another word, hurried forward. Presently 
the fellow who had first signalled sprang into the rigging, with the 
glass slung over his shoulder. He ran nimbly aloft, and was speed- 
ily on the top-gallant yard ; and there he sat, with an arm embracing 
the mast, from time to time levelling the polished tube, that glanced 
like a ray of light in his hand, and slowly sweeping the sea from 
one beam to another. Wilfrid came to a stand at sight of him ; he 
clasped his arms on his breast, his gaze directed aloft, while he sway- 
ed on one leg, with the other bent before him to the heave of the 
deck; his melodramatic posture made one think of a Manfred in 
the act of assailing some celestial body with injurious language. It 
pained me to look at him. He w'as pale and haggard, but there was 
the spirit of high breeding in every lineament to give the grace of 
distinction and a quality of spiritual tenderness to his odd, irregular, 
uncomely face. He stared so long and so fixedly at the man that 
I saw the fellows forward looking up too, as though there must be 
something uncommon there to detain the baronet’s gaze. After a 
while he let his arms drop with an awakening manner, and slowly 
sent his eyes around the sea in the most absent way that could be 
till, his gaze meeting mine, he gave a start, and cried, with a flourish 
of one hand, while he pointed to the top-gallant yard with the other : 
“ Day and night, Charles ; day and night ! And keep you on the 
lookout, too, will you, old friend? You carry a sailor’s eye in your 
head, and have hunted under canvas before. We mustn’t miss her; 


72 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


we mustn’t miss her !” And with a shake of his head he abruptly 
strode to the companion and went below. 

I sat with Miss Jennings under the shelter of the bulwarks until 
hard upon luncheon-time. Wilfrid did not again make his appear- 
ance on deck that morning. The girl asked me if the test the men’s 
eyesight had been put to was my cousin’s notion. I answered that 
it was the captain’s. 

“ Then, how stupid of him, Mr. Monson !” 

“ Well, perhaps so,” said I ; “ but I’m rather sorry for Finn, do 
you know. It is not only that he has to execute orders which 
he may consider ridiculous; he has to plot so as to harmonize the 
plain routine of shipboard life with Wilfrid’s irrational or extrav- 
agant expectations. But there is the mate; I have not spoken 
to him yet. Let’s hear what he thinks of the skipper’s testing 
job.” 

He was pacing the lee quarter-deck, being in charge of the yacht, 
though Finn had been up and down throughout the morning snif- 
fing about uneasily, as though he could not bear to have the picture 
of the little ship out of his sight too long. I called to him, and he 
crossed over to us slowly, as though astonished that I should want 
him. His face had something of a Cape-Horn look, with its slewed 
eye and a number of warts riding the wrinkles of his weather-sea- 
soned skin, and a mat of hair upon his throat as coarse as rope- 
yarns. He was no beauty, certainly, yet I fancied him somehow as 
a good seaman — maybe for the forecastle sourness of his face and 
a general sulkiness of demeanor, which I have commonly found as 
expressing excellent sea-going principles. 

“You’re the mate, I think, Mr. Crimp,” said I, blandly. 

“Yes, I’m the mate,” he answered, staring from me to Miss Jen- 
nings, and speaking in a voice broken by years of bawling in heavy 
weather, and possibly, too, by hard drinking. 

“ We’re blowing along very prettily, Mr. Crimp. If this breeze 
holds it cannot be long before we are out of soundings.” 

“ No, I don’t suppose it will be long,” said he. 

“Do you know the Shark 

“Why, yes.” 

“Are we going to pick her up, think you?” 

“ Well, if we gets into her wake and shoves along faster nor she, 
there’ll be nothin’ to stop us picking her up,” he answered, steadily 
viewing Miss Jennings and myself alternately, to satisfy his mind, 
as I took it, that we were not quizzing him. 


OCEAN tflACED^. 

“1 suppose,” said I, “that the captain will be testing the eyesight 
of the other watch presently ?” 

“Ay,” said he, with a sort of sneer, “ they’ll go aloft after dinner.” 

“ Isn’t it a good test ?” 

“Don’t see no use in it at all,” he answered, gruffly, sending a 
look aloft, and following it on with an adnlonitory stare at the fel- 
low at the wheel. “ Suppose nothin’ had hove into view ; the men 
ud be still a-watching. ’Sides, observing an object at sea depends 
upon where your eyes is. One chap may be looking in another 
direction when his mate sings out. Is that going to stand for a sign 
that his sight’s poor ?” 

“What do the men think?” said I, anxious to get behind the 
forecastle, so to fpeak, for I was never to know how far knowledge 
of this kind might be serviceable to us later on. 

“ Why, the watch has been a-grumbling and a-quarrelling over the 
rewards. They say ’tain’t fair. If t’other watch is to be tested on 
the same terms, stand by for something like a melhee, says 1.” 

“ Oh, but that must be stopped,” I exclaimed ; “we want no ‘ mel- 
hees,’ Mr. Crimp.” 

Just then I caught sight of Captain Finn. I beckoned to him, 
and the mate passed over to leeward, where he fell to pacing the 
deck as before. I told the skipper what Crimp had said, and he 
burst into a laugh. 

“ Melhees !” he exclaimed ;“ that’s just what old Jacob ud like. 
He’s a regular lime-juicer, sir, and distils hacid at every pore; but 
he’s a first-class seaman. I’d rather have that man by my side at 
a time of danger than the choicest of all the sailors as I can call 
to mind that I’ve met in my day. But there’ll be no melhee, sir ; 
there’ll be no melhee, lady. The men are grumbling a bit; and why? 
’Cause they’re sailors ; but it’ll be all right, sir. That there notion 
of testing — I don’t mind owning of it to you — was merely to pacify 
Sir Wilfrid, sir. I’ll carry out his orders, of course, and send the 
other watch aloft arter dinner. It’ll have to cost another fifteen 
shillin’, otherwise I don’t mean to say there mightn’t come a feeling 
of on pleasantness among the sailors ; but Sir Wilfrid ’ll not mind 
that, sir.” 

I drew the money from my pocket and gave it him. “ Here,” 
said I, “ yon needn’t trouble Sir Wilfrid ; I’ll make it right with him. 
Only,” I exclaimed, “ keep the crew in a good temper; we do not 
want any disaffection. Heaven knows there’s trouble enough aboard 
as it is !” 


14 


an ocean tragedy. 


He knuckled his forehead, and the luncheon-bell now sounding, 
I handed Miss Jennings below ; but I could not help saying to her, 
as we stood a moment together in the cabin, that I saw one part of 
my duty would lie in advising Wilfrid to have as little as possible 
to do with his crew and the working of the yacht ; for grief and 
heart-bitterness had so sharpened his eccentricities that one never 
could tell what orders he might give of a nature to lead to diffi- 
culty and trouble with the men. “ Perhaps,” I added, “ it might be 
thought that a sincere friendship would suffer him to have his way, 
in the hope that some measure of his would bring this goose-chase 
to an abrupt end, and force him home. But, then, you are interest- 
ed in the pursuit, Miss Jennings, and Heaven forbid that effort, or 
influence, or agency of mine, should hinder you from realizing the 
hope with which you have embarked on this strange adventure !” 


AN OCEAN TKAGEDY. 


75 


CHAPTER VIL 

SAIL, HO ! 

A CHARACTERISTIC of Wilfrid’s mental feebleness was bis inabil- 
ity to keep his attention long fixed. This symptom would be more 
or less acute according to the hold his trouble had of him. He 
arrived at the luncheon-table to the second summons, and I was 
really startled, after conversing with him a little, to gather from what 
he said that the whole incident of the testing of the men’s eyesight 
had gone sheer out of his memory. This being so, no purpose could 
have been served by recurring to it, though, had he mentioned the 
subject, I had made up my mind to use it as a text that I might ex- 
hort him not to meddle with his crew, nor in any way step between 
Captain Finn and the navigation of the Bride. 

However, I found something to raise a hope in me, too, in his odd, 
variable, imperfect intellect — namely, that he might come presently 
to, but dimly, comprehend the purport of this voyage, and then I 
did not doubt of being able to influence him and carry him back 
home, in short ; for the wild uncertainty of the adventure was -made 
to my mind more extravagant still by the inspiration of it being 
due to my poor cousin’s weak brains ; in fact, not to mince my 
meaning, it would have been a mad undertaking in the sanest man’s 
hands ; to my fancy, then, it became the completest expression of 
madness possible, when I thought of a madman as conceiving and 
governing it. 

Finn, as I afterwards learned, sent the other watch aloft while we 
were at lunch, and there they hung, staring away for an hour, when, 
just as the captain was about to sing out to them to come down, a 
fellow on the foreyard (the lowest of the three yards) signalled a 
sail, and then all hands saw it together I So, to arrest any further 
grumbling, Finn gave five shillings to the foreyard man, and made 
the watch draw lots for the other two five-shilling prizes. This ar- 
rangement satisfied them, and it seemed to soothe the fellows in the 
other watch as well, who perhaps now perceived that there was little 
but inanity in the test, and that the only sensible way to treat the 
whole affair was to look upon it as a joke. 


^6 


AN ocean tragedy. 


This I learned afterwards from Finn, who did not show himself 
much surprised to hear that Sir Wilfrid had apparently forgotten 
the incident of the morning. 

“You’ll forgive me saying of it, Mr. Monson,” he exclaimed, 
“ seeing it is your own cousin I’m speaking about, sir ; but I’ve been 
master of this yacht now since he bought her for her ladyship, and I 
know this much of Sir Wilfrid, that his mind ain’t as if it were half 
the time with the orders he gives. He’ll say a thing without the 
eyes of his intellects being upon it. The result is that soon after 
the word is off his lips the sentiment of ’em is gone from his recol- 
lection. It is like breathing on a looking-glass ; there’s the mark, 
but it don’t last long.” 

It came on a bit thick that afternoon, with now and again a haze of 
rain in the gust of a squall, sweeping like the explosion of a gun into 
the straining canvas out of the heart of the hard but steady breeze ; 
and this weather, together with some strange edge of cold that had 
entered it since luncheon-time, kept us below, though I was on deck 
for a little while when I had that chat with the skipper which I have 
just repeated. Wilfrid lighted his big pipe in the cabin, telling Miss 
Laura that she had given us leave to smoke there on the preceding 
night — an odd proof of his powder to remember little things. The 
interior was a bit gloomy with the ashen atmosphere of the gray 
day sifting through the skylight and down the companion-hatch, and 
with a green dimness coming yet into it from time to time to the 
burying of the glass of the ports in the pale emerald of the clear 
brine under the froth that was roaring away past on the surface. 
But there was nothing much to incommode one in the movements 
of the vessel ; wind and sea, as I have said, were on the quarter, 
and the lift of the tall Channel surge came soft as its own melting 
head to the weather-counter, running the shapely fabric into a long, 
arrowy floating launch ahead, with a lean down that was wrought by 
rhythmic action into a mere bit of cradle-play. 

Snugged in the cushions of a most luxurious arm-chair, with the 
consoling scent of a fine cigar under my nose, and a noble claret 
within arm’s-reach chilled to the temperature of snow by the richly 
chased silver jug which contained it, I felt that there must be great- 
er hardships in life than yachting, even when the sailing cruise came 
to a hunt for a runaway wife. Miss Jennings sat near me with a 
novel in her lap, on whose open page her violet eyes would sometimes 
rest when the conversation languished. There was a mirror in the bulk- 
head just behind me, and her hair shone in it as though a sunbeam 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


17 

rested on her tresses. Wilfrid lay at full length upon a couch, blow- 
ing clouds from his pipe, with his large, strange, weak eyes fixed 
upon the upper-deck. He talked a good deal of his travels, always 
rationally and often with evidences of a shrewd perception, but again 
and again he would withdraw his pipe from his mouth and seem to 
forget that he held it, sigh deeply, a long tremulous inspiration that 
was full of the tears of a heart which sobbed continuously, then start 
on a sudden, sit upright, and send a crazy wandering look at the 
port-hole near him ; after which he would stretch his form again and 
resume his pipe, and fall to talking afresh, but never picking up the 
thread he had let drop, or speaking with the least reference to the 
anecdote, experience, incident, or what not, from whose relation he 
had just broken. 

Once he jumped up, after lying silent for five or ten minutes, dur- 
ing which Miss Jennings seemed to read, while I, thinking of noth- 
ing in particular, lazily watched the rings of cigar-smoke I expelled 
fioat to the wreathing of flowers and foliage painted with delightfu* 
taste upon the cabin ceiling. His movement was extraordinarily 
abrupt ; he put his pipe down and stalked to his cabin — stalk is the 
one word that expresses my cousin’s peculiar walk when any dark 
or strange mood was upon him — and I presumed that he had gone 
into hiding for a while; but he quickly reappeared. There was a 
light in his eye and a spot of red on each high cheek-bone as he put 
a case in my hand, saying, “ Will thevse do, d’ye think, Charles?” 

It contained a handsome pair of duelling pistols. 

“ Upon my word, Wilfrid,” said I, in an off-hand way, while I 
toyed with one of the weapons as if admiring it, “ our little ship is 
not without teeth, eh ? What with your gun forward and the small- 
arms near my cabin, and now these — you’ll be having a powder-mag- 
azine on board, I suppose?” 

“ There’ll be as much powder as we need, I dare say. What think 
you of those weapons?” 

“They are quite killing. For what purpose are pills like these 
gilded so sumptuously ? Is all this garnishing supposed to make 
death more palatable?” 

Miss Laura extended her hand and I gave her the weapon I was ex- 
amining. A look came into her face that made me feel glad I wasn’t 
Colonel Hope-Kennedy just then. She flushed to some thought with 
a sudden sweep of her gaze to the port-hole, then looked again at the 
pistol w’hile she bit her lip. I found something fascinating in this 
brief passage of spirit in her, Wilfrid, holding the other pistol, drew 


78 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


himself erect before a length of looking-glass against the starboard 
bulkhead, and levelled the weapon at his own reflection. He stood 
motionless, save for the swaying of his flgure upon the rolling deck, 
his head thrown back, his nostrils large, his countenance a sallow 
white ; it was absolutely as though he believed in the reality of his 
own impersonation, and waited for the signal to fire. 

“Bless me, Wilfrid !” cried I, “I hope these affairs of yours aren’t 
loaded ! Hair-triggers, by jingo ! Mind — if they are — you’ll de- 
stroy that fine piece of plate-glass.” 

Of course I knew better ; but his rapt posture was a little alarm- 
ing, and I said the first thing that came into my head, to break the 
spell. His arm sank to his side, and he turned to me with a grin 
that was bewildering with its conflicting emotions of anger, misery, 
and triumph. 

“ Let that man give me a chance !” said he, in a low but deep 
voice. 

“Ay, but my dear boy,” said I, relieved by his slowly returning 
the pistols to the case, “ figure the boot on the other leg ; suppos- 
ing he kills you .^” 

“ Good God !” cried he, “ d’ye think that consideration would 
hinder me from attempting the life of the ruffian who has brought 
shame and dishonor upon me and my child ?” 

“ No,” said I, with a glance at Miss Laura, whom I found eying 
me with a look of surprise that sparkled with something more than 
a hint of temper; “but if we should meet this fellow on the open 
sea, and you challenge him, and he should kill you, what will you 
have done for yourself? Suffered him to put you quietly out of the 
road and achieve the double triumph of first taking your wife from 
you, and then making a widow of her! — which, of course, would an- 
swer his purpose very well, whether he designed matrimony or not, 
seeing that there could not be much peace of mind for him with the 
knowledge either that you were on his track, or waiting with spider- 
like patience in England for his return.” 

“ By Heaven, Charles 1” he roared out, “ no man but you would 
dare talk to me like this — ” 

I raised my hand. “ Wilfrid, nothing that you can say, no tem- 
per that you can exhibit, no menaces that you may utter, will pre- 
vent me from remembering that I am here at your earnest request 
as the one male friend you wished at your side in such a time, and 
from speaking to you as freely as I should think within myself. This, 
to be sure, is ridiculously premature. Wo have yet to fall in with 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


79 


the Shark. Supposing that happens, and that Colonel Hope-Ken- 
nedy consents to fight you, and you insist, then it will not be for me 
to say you nay. But, believe me, nothing shall intimidate me from 
trying to make you understand that, honor or no honor, to give that 
rascal an opportunity of assassinating you would be the very mad- 
dest act your most righteous wrath could hurry you into.” 

He looked at me a little while in silence, was about to speak, 
checked himself, or maybe it was his voice that failed ; a dampness 
came into his eyes, he compressed his lips till they were bloodless in 
the effort to suppress his tears ; then, flourishing his arm with a gest- 
ure grievously expressive of the anguish he was feeling at that mo- 
ment, he went to his cabin, and we saw no more of him till dinner- 
time. 

I thought Miss Jennings would rebuke me for what I had said, 
and I gathered myself together, in an intellectual sense, for a little 
gentle fencing with her for a bit ; for, let her hate the colonel as she 
might, and let her be as eager as she would that her sister should be 
speedily rescued from the villain she had sacrificed her honor for, I 
had made up my mind not to suffer her to imagine that I regarded 
a meeting between the two men as a necessary effect of the colonel’s 
action ; but that, on the contrary, I should consider it my duty to 
vehemently discountenance a duel, until I found that there was noth- 
ing in argument to dissuade my cousin ; when, of course, I would 
render him such services as he might expect from me. 

In short, as you wdll see, I took a cold-blooded view of the whole 
business. The prosaic arbitrament of the law ! that was my notion. 
The shears of a dispassionate judge; no pistols and coffee for tw^o, 
thank’ee ! Methinks when it comes to one’s wife preferring Jones 
or Tomkins to one’s own lovely self, her new emotions should be 
helped, not by giving the latest darling of her heart the chance to 
kill one, but by starting one’s attorney to play upon the blissful 
couple with the cold, black venom of his inkhorn ! 

Miss Jennings, however, made no reference to my speech, nor to 
the manner of Wilfrid’s going. She remained quiet, and showed 
herself subdued and grieved for some time, and then we talked about 
the testing of the men’s sight, and I repeated what Captain Finn 
had said to me on that subject. On a sudden *she exclaimed : 

“You told me, Mr. Monson, that you have never seen my sister.” 

“ No ; only heard of her, and then quite indirectly.” 

She went to her cabin, moving in a very inimitable, floating, grace- 
ful, yielding way, to the heaye of the deck, never offering to grasp 


80 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


anything for support, though the lee lurches were at times somewhat 
staggering, and I thought I never saw a more perfect little figure as 
she withdrew, her hair glowing, when her form was already vague, as 
she flitted into the shadow astern of the companion-steps, towards 
the dark corridor, or passage, which conducted to her cabin. She 
returned after a short absence with a miniature painting, set in a 
very handsome case, on which was my cousin’s crest, with initials 
beneath, signifying that it was a gift from him to Laura Jennings. 
I carried it under the skylight to see it clearly. 

“ When was this done ?” I asked. 

“ About a year ago,” she answered ; “ Wilfrid sent it to Melbourne 
as a gift to me.” 

Now, it might be that I was then — taste, of course, changes — no 
very passionate admirer of dark women — brunettes, I mean, of a 
South European sort, which the face in the miniature was after the 
pattern of — and that is why, no doubt, the expectation in me of the 
ripe and tropic graces I was to behold was not a little disappointed. 
Any one could see by the likeness that Lady Monson was a fine 
woman ; her hair was raven black, but there was a want of taste in 
the fashion in which it was dressed ; her eyes were bright, imperious, 
rather too staring, with something of haughty astonishment in their 
expression ; but this might have been the artist’s misinterpretation 
of their character. She was as like her sister Laura as I was like 
her. Her mouth was somewhat large, rich, voluptuous ; the throat 
very beautiful, with something about the line or curve of the jaw 
which would have made you suspect, without knowing the original, 
that the character of this part of the face was exquisitely reproduced. 
It was a heaviness to communicate a slightly masculine air to the 
whole countenance. I turned to Miss Jennings, and found her eyes 
intent on my face. 

“ She is a handsome lady,” said I, “ handsomer, I should think, 
than she is here represented, quite apart, I mean, from the glow of 
countenance, the animation of look, and all the rest of the things 
which go to make up two-thirds at least of human beauty.” 

She took the miniature in silence. 

“ She is not like you,” said I. 

“ Not in the least,” she exclaimed. “ I am little, she is very tall. 
She has a commanding manner, a rich voice, and, indeed,” she add- 
ed, with a smile, and then looking down, “ any one might suppose 
her of noble blood.” 

I should have liked to tell her ho>v very rquch sweeter and pret' 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


81 


tier she was than her sister; what a very different sort of heart, as 
it seemed to me, from her ladyship’s, looked out at you from her 
violet eyes ; how very much more good, pure, gentle, sympathetic, 
womanly was the expression of her mouth compared with what I 
had found in the portrait’s. But our friendship was rather too new 
just then for such candor as this ; yet I would not swear that some 
faint suspicion did not cross her of what was in my mind, though so 
subtle are women’s ways, so indeterminable by words the meaning 
that may be perfectly emphatic to every instinct in one in the turn 
of the head, a droop of the lid, a sudden, soft tincturing of the cheek, 
that I have no reason to offer for supposing this. 

She took the miniature to her cabin, and I waited a while, think- 
ing she would return. I then lighted a cigar, but as I stepped towards 
the companion, with the design of killing the rest of the afternoon 
till the dinner-hour on deck. Muffin came down the steps. He looked 
hideously sallow, and carried a horribly dismal expression of counte- 
nance, but he appeared to be no longer in liquor. 

“ Well,” said I, shortly, “ how are you now. Muffin ?” 

“ Uncommonly queer, I am sorrowful to say, sir,” he answered, 
patting his stomach and falling away on his left leg with a humbly 
respectful downcast look, and a writhe of the lips into a smile that 
would have been expressionless if it was not that it increased his 
ugliness by the exhibition of a row of fangs of the color of the keys 
of an ancient harpsichord. “ The sea is not a congenial spear^ sir.” 

“ Sphere, I suppose you mean,” said I ; “ but give yourself a day 
or two, man ; the sickness will wear off.” 

“ I heg your pardon, sir—” he paused, still keeping his eyes 
downward, while he bowed meekly and respectfully, but with an air 
of profound dejection. 

“ Well ?” I exclaimed, running my gaze over the fellow’s odd fig- 
ure, with a yearning to laugh in me at the sight of the gouty bulg* 
ings of his feet over his pumps. 

May I take it, sir,” said he, clasping his hands humbly upon his 
waistcoat, “ that there is no disposition on the Bayronet’s part to 
give up chasing of her ladyship by water?” 

“You may,” said I, bluntly. “ Why, confound it. Muffin, we’ve 
only just entered on the run !” 

He turned up his eyes to heaven till nothing showed but the 
bloodshot whites. “Sir, I humbly beg your pardon. It seems an 
ordaeious liberty for the likes of me to be questioning the likes of 
you ; but may I ask, sir, is the voyage likely to carry us fur?” 

6 


82 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Well, it is about six thousand miles to the Cape, to begin with,” 
said I. 

“ Good God !” he cried, startled out of all respectfulness. “ Why, 
there’ll be years of sailing in that distance, sir, begging your pardon 
for the hexclamation my agitation caused me to make, sir.” 

“ If you want to return,” said I, feeling a sort of pity for the poor 
devil, for the consternation that worked in him lay very strong upon 
his yellow face, “your plan must be to obtain Sir Wilfrid’s permis- 
sion to transship yourself into the first vessel we speak that will be 
willing to receive you and carry you to England. It is the only 
remedy I can suggest.” 

He bowed very meekly and with a manner of respectful gratitude ; 
nevertheless, something in him seemed to tell me that he was not 
very much obliged by my suggestion, and that if he quitted Wilfrid’s 
service it would not be in the manner I recommended. 

Nothing worth noting happened till next day. It was in the 
afternoon. The Scillies were astern, and the broad Atlantic was 
now stretching fair under our bows. A strong fine wind had bowled 
ns steadily down Channel, and the utmost had been made of it by 
Captain Finn, who, despite his talk of studding-sails and stowed 
anchors, had sent his booms aloft ere we had brought Prawle Point 
abeam, and the Bride had swept along before the strong wind, that 
would come in slaps at times, with almost the spite of a bit of a hur- 
ricane in them, under a foretop-mast studding-sail ; whence you will 
gather that the yacht was prodigiously crowded ; but then Finn was 
alw'ays under the influence of the fear of Wilfrid’s head in the com- 
panion-hatch ; for I learned that several times in the night my cousin 
unexpectedly made his appearance on deck, and his hot, incessant 
command to both Finn and old Jacob Crimp, according as he found 
one or the other in charge, was that they were to sail the yacht at 
all hazards short of springing her lower masts, for in the matter of 
spare booms and suits of canvas she could not have been more lib- 
erally equipped had her errand signified a three years’ fighting 
voyage. 

Well, as I have said, it was the afternoon of the third day of our 
leaving Southampton. The breeze had slackened much about the 
time that Finn stood ogling the sun through his sextant, and then it 
veered in a small puff 'and came on to blow a gentle, steady wind 
from south - south -east, which tautened our sheets for us and 
brought the square yards fore and aft. There was a long broad- 
browed swell from the southward that flashed under the hazy sun- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


83 


light like splintered glass with the wrinkling of it, over which the 
yacht went rolling and bowing in a rhythm as stately and regular 
as the swing of a thousand -ton Indiaman, with a sulky lift of 
foam to her cut-water at every plunge and a yeasty seething spread- 
ing on either quarter, the recoiling wash of it from the counter as 
snappish as surf. Suddenly from high above, cleaving the vaporous 
yellow of the atmosphere in a dead sort of way, came a cry from the 
lookout man on the top-gallant yard, “ Sail, ho !” and the sparkle of 
the telescope in his hands as he levelled the glittering tube at the 
sea, over the starboard bow, rendered the customary echo of “ Where 
away?” unnecessary. 

There was nothing, however, to take notice of in this ; the cry of 
“Sail, ho!” had been sounding pretty regularly on and off since the 
lookout aloft had been established, as you will suppose when you 
think of the crowded waters we were then navigating; though 
everything thus signalled so far had hove into view broad on either 
bow or on either beam. We were all on deck ; that is to say, Miss 
Jennings, snug in a fur cloak — for the shift of wind had not softened 
the temperature of the atmosphere — in a chair near the skylight; 
Wilfrid near her, lying upon the ivory-white plank smoking a cigar, 
with his head supported on his elbow, and I stumping the deck clovse 
to them, with Finn abreast of the wheel to windward. We were in 
the midst of some commonplace chatter when that voice from aloft 
smote our ears, and when we saw the direction in which the fellow 
was holding his glass levelled we all looked that way, scarce thinking 
for the moment that if the stranger were heading for us she would 
not be in sight from the deck for a spell yet, and as long again if 
she were travelling our course. 

Miss Jennings resumed her seat; Wilfrid stretched his length 
along the deck as before ; and I went on pacing to and fro close 
beside them. 

“ It will be a Monday on which we sight the Shark^^'' said Wilfrid. 

“ How do you know ?” said I. 

“ I dreamed it,” he answered. 

Miss Jennings looked at him wistfully, as if she believed in dreams. 

“ It was an odd vision,” he continued, with a soft, far-away ex- 
pression in his eyes, very unlike the usual trouble in them. “I 
dreamed that on hearing of the — of the” — he puslied his hair from 
his forehead, and spoke with his hand to his brow — “ I say that 1 
dreamed I flung myself on horseback — it was a favorite mare — Lady 
Henrietta, Laura ” — she bowed her head — “and gave chase. I did 


84 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


not know which way to go, so I let fall the reins on the aiiiinars 
neck, and left the scent to the detection of her instincts. She carried 
me to the sea-coast, a desolate bit of a bay, I remember, with the air 
full of the moaning of vexed waters and a melancholy crying of 
wind in the crevices and chasms of the cliff, and the whole scene 
made gaunter than it needed to have been, as I fancied, by a skeleton 
that was one moment that of a big fish and the next of a man, fluctu- 
ating upon the sight like an image seen three fathoms deep floating 
in such glass-clear water as you get in the West Indian latitudes.” 
He paused. “ Where was I ?” he inquired, with an air of bewilder- 
ment. 

“Your horse had carried you to the sea-shore,” said Miss Laura, 
with her face full of credulity. I love a superstitious girl, and who 
is the woman that does not believe in dreams? 

“ Ha !” he cried, after a brief effort of memory ; “ yes, the mare 
came to a stand on the margin of the beach, and Heaven knows 
whence the apparition rose; but there was an empty boat tossing 
before me, with a sort of sign-post erected in her, a pole with a 
blackboard upon it on which was written, in letters that glowed as 
though wrought by a brush dipped in a sunbeam, the single word 
‘ Monday !’ ” 

“ Pooh !” said I, scornfully, and fancying at the moment that 
something stirred in the companion-way. I moved a step or two in 
that direction, and saw Muffin, with his head a trifle above the level 
of the top step, apparently taking the air, though no doubt he was 
diverting himself too by listening to our talk. On seeing me he de- 
scended, stepping backward with a sickly respectful smile of apology. 

“Why do you say pooh, Mr. Monson?” asked Miss Jennings. 
“ Wise people never ridicule dreams until they have been disproved.” 

I admired her arch air, that floated like a veil of gauze over her 
sympathy with Wilfrid. 

“I don’t want to believe in dreams,” said I; “my own dreams 
are much too uncomfortable to make me desire faith in that direc- 
tion.” 

I glanced at Wilfrid; his eyes were staring right up at the vane 
at the maintop-mast head, and it was easily seen that he was no 
longer thinking of what we had been talking about. Miss Jennings 
opened the novel that lay in her lap, and seemed to read ; there was 
a store of this sort of literature in the yacht, laid in, I dare say, by 
Sir Wilfrid for Lady Monson, who, I don’t doubt, was a great de- 
vourer of novels ; the trash in one, two, and three volumes of an age 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


85 


of trashy fiction, of a romantic literature of gorgeous waistcoats, 
nankeen breeches, and Pelham cravats. I don’t think Miss Jennings 
had read much of the book she held. It was called “ The Peeress,” 
and I believe it had taken her two days to arriv^at the end of the 
first chapter. But then, who can read at sea ? /Por my part, I can 
never fix my attention. In a dead calm I am prone to snooze ; in a 
brisk breeze every swoop of surge, every leap of frothing head, every 
glance of sunshine, every solemn soaring of white cloud up the slope 
of the liquid girdle is an irresistible appeal to quit my author for 
teachers full of hints worth remembering ; and then, indeed, I yield 
myself to that luxury of passivity Wordsworth rhymes about — that 
disposition to keep quiet until I am visited with impulses — the hap- 
piest apology ever attempted by a home-keeping poet for an unwill- 
ingness to be at the trouble to seek beyond his hill-side for ideas. 

“ Here is a flowery fancy !” exclaimed Miss Jennings, and she be- 
gan to read. It was something — I forget what — in the primitive 
Bulwerian vein ; plenty of capitals, I dare say, and without much 
sense that I could make out to linger upon the ear; but one sen- 
tence I remember : “ He had that inexpressible air of distinction 
which comes as a royal gift from Heaven to members of old families, 
and only to them.” 

“ Stupid ass I” exclaimed Wilfrid, whom I had imagined to be 
wool-gathering. 

“But there is truth in it, though,” said Miss Jennings. 

“ What is an old family ?” I exclaimed. 

“ Why, a good family, surely, Mr. Monson,” she answered. 

“ No, no, Laura,” grumbled Wilfrid. “ I could introduce you to a 
’longshore sailor who can’t sign his name, and w'hose sole theory of 
principle lies in successfully hoodwinking the revenue people, who 
will tell you that his forefathers have been boatmen and smugglers 
for over three hundred years, and who could feel his way back along 
a chain of Jims, Dicks, and Joes, without a link missing down, may- 
be, to a time when the progenitors of scores of our dukes, earls, 
and the rest of them were — tush ! That boatman belongs to an 
old family.” 

“ Then, pray, what is a good family ?” inquired Miss Jennings. 

“Yonder’s the sail that was sighted a while agone. Sir Wilfrid,” 
sung out Captain Finn, in his leather-lunged voice. 

My cousin sprang to his feet, and the three of us went to the rail 
to look. 


86 


AN OCEAN TKAGEOr. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

WE SPEAK THE “ WANDERER.” 

On the lee bow was a dash of orange light, much less like the 
sails of a ship than a feather vapor bronzed by a sunset and vanish- 
ing in the tail of a cloud. 

“ How does she head, Finn ?” cried Wilfrid to the skipper, who 
was viewing her through a long, heavy, powerful glass of his own. 

“ Coming dead on end for us, sir.” 

“ What’ll she be, captain ?” said I. 

He eyed her a bit and answered, “A square rig, sir; a bit of a 
bark, I dare say.” 

My cousin suddenly slapped his leg — one of his favorite gestures 
when a fit of excitement seized him. “ Charles,” he bawled, “ we’ll 
speak her. D’ye hear me, Finn ? We’ll speak her, I say !” 

“ Ay, ay, sir !” cried the captain. 

“ She may have news for us,” Wilfrid proceeded ; “ it is about 
time we fell in with something that has sighted the Shark'' 

“A bit betimes, sir,” said Finn, touching his cap and approaching 
to give me his telescope, which I had extended my hand for. 

“ Confound it, man !” cried Wilfrid, in a passion, “ everything’s al- 
ways too soon with you. Suppose by this time to-morrow we should 
have the schooner in sight — what then, hey ? What would be your 
arguments ? That she had no business to heave in sight yet ?" 

Finn made no answer, but pulled his cap off to scratch his head, 
with his lips muttering unconsciously to himself to the energy of 
his secret thoughts, and his long face, which his mouth seemed to 
sit exactly in the middle of, working in every muscle with protest. 

The distant vessel was showing in the glass as high as the curve 
of her fore-course, with now and again a dim sort of refractive glim- 
mer of wet black hull rising off a head of sea into an airy, pale 
length of light that hung in a low gleam between the junction of 
sea and sky. The sun was westering though still high, but his orb 
was rayless, and the body of him looked no more than an oozing of 
shapeless yellow fiame into the odd sky, that seemed a misty blue in 
places, though where it appeared so you would notice a faint outline 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


87 


of cloud, and as he waned his reflection in the wind-wrinkled heave 
of the long head-swells seemed as if each broad, soft brow was alive 
with runnings of flaming oil. 

There was to be no more argument about good and bad families. 
Wilfrid now could think of nothing but the approaching vessel, and 
the child-like qualities which went to the creation of his baflling, uU- 
fixable nature showed in an eager impatience, in which you seemed 
to witness as much of boyish desire for something fresh and new to 
happen as of anything else. I^or my part, I detest arguments* 
They force you to give reasons and to enter upon definitions. 1 
fancied, however, I was beginning to detect Miss Laura’s little weak* 
ness. There was a feminine hankering in her after ancient blood, 
sounding titles, high and mighty things. As I glanced at her sweet 
face I felt in the humor to lecture her. What but this weakness 
had led to her sister’s undoing? Wilfrid was a worthy, honest, 
good-hearted, generous-souled creature, spite of his being a bit mad ; 
but I could not imagine he was a man to fall in love with, and in 
this queer chase we had entered upon there was justification enough 
of that notion. His wife had married him, I suppose, for position, 
which she had allowed the first good-looking rogue she met to per- 
suade her was as worthless as dust and ashes unless a human heart 
beat inside it. And the scoundrel was right, though he deserved the 
halter for his practical illustration of his meaning. I met Miss 
Jennings’s eye, and she smiled. She called softly to me : 

“ You are puzzling over the difference, between a good and an old 
family !” 

“I wish my countenance were less ingenuous,” said I. 

“ Hadn’t you better run up some signal,” exclaimed Wilfrid, turn- 
ing upon Finn, to make yonder craft know that we want her to 
stop ?” 

“ Lay aft here, a couple of hands,” shouted Finn, in a sulky note. 

Two seamen instantly came along. The flag-locker was dragged 
from its cleats, or chocks, under the small, milk-white grating abaft 
the wheel ; Finn, with a square, carrot-colored thumb, ploughed into 
the book of directions ; then, after a little, a string of butterfly bunt- 
ing soared gracefully to the top-mast head, where the flags were to 
be best seen, a long pennant topping the gay colors like a tongue of 
flame against the rusty yellow of the atmosphere ; the dip of the 
yacht to the swell became a holiday courtesy, and you thought of 
her as putting on a simper like some pretty country wench newly 
pranked out by her sweetheart with a knot of ribbons. 


88 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Aft and Laid up the main-tack ; round in on tlie weatlier fore* 
braces, and lay the top-sail to the mast; down helium ! so — leave her 
at that !” and the Bride^ with the wide ocean heave lifting to the 
bow, came to a stand, her way arrested, the wind combing her fore 
and aft canvas like the countless invisible fingers of giant spirits, and 
a dull plash and sulky wash of water alongside, and a frequent sharp 
clatter of wheel-chains to the jar of the churning rudder. There 
was the true spirit of the deep in this picture then, for the seamen 
had dropped the various jobs they were upon and stood awaiting 
orders about the decks, every man’s shadow swaying upon the salt 
sparkling of the spotless planks, and all eyes directed at the ap- 
proaching craft, that had now risen to her wash-streak and was 
coming along in a slow, stately roll, with her canvas yearning from 
flying-jib to fore-royal, every cloth yellow as satin, and flashes of 
light like the explosion of ordnance breaking in soft sulphur-colored 
flames from her wet side as she lifted it sunward from the pale blue 
brine, that melted yeastily from her metalled fore-foot into two sali- 
val lines which united abaft and went astern in a wake that looked 
as if she were towing some half-mile length of amber-tinctured satin. 
Yet there was no beauty in her as in us; it was the sweetness and 
grace of airy distance working in her, and the mild and misty gush- 
ing of the afternoon radiance, and the wild infolding arms of the 
horizon sweeping, as it were, the very soul of the mighty ocean lone- 
liness into her solitary shape and into her bland and starlike canvas, 
until you found her veritably spiritualized out of her commonplace 
meaning into a mere fairy fancy, some toylike imagination of the 
deep ; but she hardened rapidly into the familiar prosaics of timber, 
sail-cloth, and tackling as she came floating down upon us, sinking 
to her narrow white band, then poised till a broad width of her 
green sheathing was exposed, with a figure in a tall chimney-pot hat 
standing on the rail, holding on by a backstay. 

She was a slow old wagon, and one saw the reason of it as she 
came sliding along, rolling like an anchored galliot in a sea-way, in 
her bows as round as an apple and her kettle-bottom run ; and Wil- 
frid’s impatience grew into torture to us to see almost as much as 
to him to feel as he’d pace the deck for a minute or two tumultu- 
ously, then fling against the rail with a wild stare at the approach- 
ing craft, as if indeed he was cocksure she was full of news for him, 
though for my part it seemed mere trifling with the yacht’s routine 
to back her yard that we might ask questions at that early time of 
day. She steered so as to come within easy hail, and then, boom- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEOr. 


80 


ending lier foretop-niast studding-sail, she backed her maintop-sail 
and floated the full length of her out abreast of us within pistol- 
shot, pitching clumsily and bringing her bows out of it with the 
white brine frothing like lace-work all about her there, her line of 
bulwarks dotted with heads watching us, the sounds of the creak- 
ing of her aloft very clear, along with a farm-yard noise of several 
cocks crowing one after the other lustily, and the lowing of bulls or 
cows. 

“ Bark ahoy !” sung out Captain Finn, funnelling his hands as a 
vehicle for his voice. 

“ Holloa !” cried the figure that stood upon the rail, in the most 
cheery, laughing voice that can be conceived. 

“ What ship is that ?” 

“ The Wanderer.^'' 

“ Where are you from, and where are you bound to?” 

“From Valpai'aiso to Sunderland,” answered the other, in a way 
that made one think he spoke with difficulty through suppressed 
mirth. 

“ Will you tell us,” bawled Finn, “ if you’ve sighted an outward- 
bound fore-and-aft schooner-yacht within the past week ?” 

“Sighted a fore-and-aft schooner-yacht? Ay, that I have, mas- 
ter ; fine a vessel as yourn, pretty nigh,” shouted the other as though 
he must burst in a moment into a roar of laughter. 

“Ask him aboard ! ask him aboard !” cried Wilfrid, wild with ex- 
citement, slapping his knee till it was like a discharge of pistols. 
“Beg him to do me the favor of drinking a bottle of champagne 
with me; ask him — ask him — but first ascertain if he has made an 
entry of the meeting in his log-book.” 

“ Ay, ay, sir ! Ho, the bark ahoy !” 

“ Holloa !” 

“ Can you tell us when and whereabouts ye fell in with that there 
schooner?” 

“ Tell ye ? To be sure I can ; got it in black and white, master. 
Ha, ha, ha!” and here the old figure in the tall hat clapped his 
hand to his side and laughed outright, toppling and reeling about 
on the rail in such a manner that I took it for granted he was drunk, 
and expected every moment to see him plunge overboard. 

“Ask him aboard! ask him aboard!” shrieked Wilfrid. “Re- 
quest him to bring his log-book with him. We will send a boat.” 

Finn hailed the bark again. “ Sir Wilfrid Monson’s compliments 
to you, sir, and will be pleased to see you aboard to drink a bottle 


90 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


of champagne with him. Will you kindly bring your log-book with 
you ? We will send a boat.” 

“ Right y’are,” shouted the old chap, with a humorous flourish of 
his hand ; and so speaking, he sprang inboard, laughing heartily, and 
disappeared down his little companion-hatch. 

A boat was lowered, with four men, in charge of surly old Crimp. 
My cousin’s excitement was a real torment to witness. He smote 
his hands violently together while he urged the men at the top of 
his voice to bear a hand and be off or the bark would be swinging 
her top-sail and sailing away from us. He twitched from head to 
foot as though he must fall into convulsions; he bawled to the sail- 
ors not to wait to cast anything adrift, but to put their knives 
through it as though somebody were drowning astern and the delay 
of a single moment might make all the difference between life or 
death. ' “ By Heaven !” he cried, halting in front of me and Miss 
Jennings, with a fierceness of manner that was rendered almost de- 
lirious by the quality of savage exultation in it, “ I knew it would 
fall out thus ! They cannot escape me. Of course it is the Shark 
that that fellow has sighted.” He broke from us and ran to the 
rail and overhung it, gnawing his nails while he watched the reced- 
ing boat, with his eyelids quivering and his face working like that of 
a man in acute pain. 

“ I fear,” said I, in a low voice to Miss Jennings, “ that it would 
not require more than two or three incidents of this sort to utterly 
dement him. His resolution is strong enough. Why in the name 
of pity will not he secure his mind to it? It’s bound to go adrift 
else, I fear.” 

“ But realize what he has suffered, Mr. Monson,” she answered, 
gently. “Such a blow might unseat a stronger reason than his. I 
cannot wonder at his excitement. Look how I am trembling !” She 
lifted her little hand, which shook as though she had been seized 
with a chill, but there was tremor enough in her voice to indicate 
her agitation. “ The mere idea that the Shark may be much near- 
er to us than we imagine — that this chase may very shortly bring 
her within sight of us — ” a strong shiver ran through her. “ Do 
you believe it is the Shark that that old man saw ?” 

“ I shall be better able to judge when he comes aboard,” said I. 
“See, our boat is alongside. They must fend her off handsomely, 
by George, if she is not to be swamped ! Heavens, how that old 
cask wallows !” 

In a few moments the old man in the tall hat came to the irano-- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


91 


way and looked over ; there was apparently some discussion ; I 
imagined the elderly humorist was going to funk it, for I fancied I 
saw him wag his head ; but, on a sudden, all very nimbly, he dropped 
into the wide main-chains, whence, watching his opportunity, he 
toppled into the boat, which immediately shoved off. Wilfrid went 
to the gangway to receive him. I was a little apprehensive of the 
effect of my cousin’s behavior — which had something of the con- 
tortions and motions of a galvanized body — upon the old sea-dog 
that was coming, and I say I rather hoped that this captain might 
be a bit too tipsy to prove a nice observer. I took a view of him 
as he sat in the stern-sheets, the boat sinking and rising from peak 
to hollow as she burst through the water to the gilded, sparkling 
sweep of the admirably handled oars, and could have laughed out of 
mere sympathy with the broad grin that lay upon his jolly, mottled 
countenance. His face was as round as the full moon, and of the 
appearance of brawn ; his nose was a little fiery pimple ; small 
white whiskers went in a slant in the direction of his nostrils, com- 
ing to an end under either eye. His hat was too big for him, and 
pressed down the top of his ears into the likeness of overhang- 
ing flaps under the Quaker-like breadth of brim ; his mouth was 
stretched in a smile all the time he was approaching the yacht, and 
he burst into a loud laugh as he grasped the man-ropes and bundled 
agilely up the side of the Bride, 

“You are very good to come on board, sir,” cried Wilfrid, bow- 
ing with agitation, and speaking as though suffering from a swol- 
len throat, with the hurry, anxiety, impatience which mastered him. 
“ I thank you for this visit. I see you have your log-book with 
you. Let me inquire your name ?” 

“Puncheon, sir. Ha, ha, ha! Toby Puncheon, sir; a rascally 
queer name, ho, ho ! And your honor’s a lord, ain’t ye ? I didn’t 
quite catch the words. He, he, he 1” rattled out the old fellow, 
laughing after almost every other word, and staring at us one after 
another as he spoke, without the least diminution of his prodigious 
grin. 

“ No, no ; not a lord,” exclaimed Wilfrid, “ but pray step this 
way. Captain Puncheon. Charles, please accompany us. Captain 
Finn, I shall want you below.” 

He led the road to the companion, calling to the steward, while 
he was yet midway down the steps, to put champagne and glasses 
upon the table. 

Captain Puncheon’s grin grew alarmingly wide as he surveyed 


02 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


the glittering cabin. “My eye!” he cried, after a rumbling laugh 
full of astonishment, “ them’s looking-glasses and no mistake ! And 
pickle me blue if ever I see the likes of such lamps afore on board 
ship !” growing grave an instant to utter a low whistle. “ Why, it’s 
finer than a theaytre, ain’t it ?” he exclaimed, turning to me, once 
more grinning from ear to ear, and addressing me as if I was his 
mate that had come off with him. Ilis glass was filled ; he drank 
to us, and pulled his log-book out of the piece of newspaper in which 
he had brought it wrapped up. 

“ Will you kindly give us,” said Wilfrid, “ the date on which you 
passed the schooner-yacht ?” 

“ Ay, that I will,” cried Puncheon, turning back the pages of his 
log, and then pouncing upon an entry with a forefinger curled by 
rheumatism into the aspect of a fish-hook, as though the piece of 
writing would run away if he did not keep it squeezed down upon 
the page. He felt about his coat with his other hand, and then 
bursting into a laugh, exclaimed : “ Gents, you must read for your- 
selves. Plow’d if I ain’t gone and forgot my glasses.” 

The entry was perfectly ship-shape, and written in a round, some- 
what trembling old hand. There were the usual records of weather, 
courses steered, and the like, and under the heading of observations 
was : “ Passed large schooner-yacht, steering west-south-west. Hoist- 
ed our ensign, but she showed no colors.” The log gave the lati- 
tude and longitude of this encounter as 16° west longitude, 41° 30' 
north latitude. 

I hurriedly made certain calculations after reading aloud this 
entry, and, addressing Finn, said, “ If that vessel be the Shark, she 
has managed to hold her own so far.” 

“Ay, sir,” answered Finn, peering at my figures, “ but what’s been 
her weather?” 

“Are you chasing of her, gents?” whipped out Puncheon, smiling, 
as though he only waited for us to answer to break into a roar of 
laughter. 

“Yes,” cried Wilfrid, fiercely, “and we mean to catch her;” then, 
controlling himself, “ Captain, will you be so good as to describe 
the vessel you met ?” 

“Describe her? ’Course I will,” answered the old chap, and 
forthwith he gave us i sailorly picture of a yacht apparently of the 
burden of the Shark, a fore-and-aft schooner, a long, low, black, 
handsome vessel, loftily rigged even for a craft of her kind. She 
passed within a mile and a half of the Wanderer ; it was about 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


93 


eight o’clock in the morning, the sunshine bright, the wind north-east, 
a pleasant air. I asked Puncheon if he examined her with his glass. 
“Examine her through my glass? Ay, that I did,” he answered, in 
his hilarious way. “ I see some figures aboard aft. No lady. No, 
ne’er a hint of a female garment. Happen if there was women 
they was still abed, seeing how young the morn was for females as 
goes to sea for pleasure. I took notice of a tall gent in a white cap 
with a naval peak and a white jacket.” That was about as much 
as he could tell us, and so saying, he regaled himself with a hearty 
laugh. Finn questioned him as one sailor would another on points 
of the yacht’s furniture aloft, but the old fellow could only speak 
generally of the impression left upon him. Wilfrid’s face was 
flushed with excitement. 

“Finn,” he exclaimed, “ what do you think?” 

“Why, your honor,” said the man, deliberately, “ putting two and 
two together, and totalling up all sarcurastances of rig, haspect, time, 
and place, I don’t doubt that the schooner-yacht Captain Puncheon 
here fell in with was the Shark''* 

Puncheon rose. 

“ Empty this bottle,” cried Wilfrid to him. “ By Heaven, man, 
the news you give me does me good, though !” 

The old chap filled up, grinning merrily. 

“ Gents,” he cried, holding the foaming glass aloft and looking at 
it with one eye closed, “ your errand’s an honest one, Pm sure, and 
so here’s success to it. The craft I fell in with has got legs, mind 
ye. Yes, by thunder ! — ha, ha, ha ! — she’s got legs, gents, and’ll re- 
quire all the catching I expects your honors have stomachs for. 
’Tain’t to be done in the inside of a month — he, he, he ! — and so 
I tells ye. See her slipping through it under her square-sail ! God 
bless my body and soul, ’twas like the shadow of a cloud running 
ower the waters. But give yourselves a long course, gents all, and 
you’ve got a beauty here as must lay her aboard — in time. Ha, 
ha, ha ! Your honors, my respects to you.” 

Down went the wine, and up he got, pulling his hat to his ears, 
and stepping with a deep-sea roll up the companion-ladder. We 
followed him to the gangway. 

“ Is there nothing more to ask, Charles ?” cried Wilfrid. 

But Puncheon had given us all that he had to tell, and though I 
could have wished him to hint at something distinctive in the ves- 
sel’s hull, such as her figure-head or any other point of the like kind 
in which the Shark might differ from vessels of her build and ap- 


34 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


pearance, yet there was the strongest possible reason to suppose that 
the craft he reported was Lord Winterton’s schooner, with Lady 
Monson and Colonel Hope-Kennedy on board. 

While Captain Puncheon waited for the yacht’s boat to haul 
alongside, Sir Wilfrid sent for a box of cigars, which he presented 
to the old chap. The gift produced such a grin that I saw some 
of the hands forward turn their backs upon us to conceal their 
mirth. 

“Do you think, captain,” exclaimed Wilfrid, once more rendered 
almost alarmingly convulsive in his movements by the excitement 
that filled him, “ that there are men aboard your vessel who took 
note of more than you did in the yacht’s appearance ? If so — ” 

But Puncheon interrupted him by saying that he was the only 
man who examined the schooner through a glass, and therefore 
neither his mate nor any of the seamen who were on deck at the 
time could possibly have observed her so fully as he. 

“ Make haste and return,” bawled my cousin to the fellows in the 
boat as they shoved off with the grinning old skipper in the stern- 
sheets. “ Every moment is precious,” he muttered, walking briskly 
in short turns opposite Miss Jennings and me. “To think of them 
sneaking along like the shadow of a cloud, hey!” he sent a wildly 
impatient look aloft, and brought his foot with a heavy stamp to 
the deck. 

“ It is the Shark, then ?” whispered Miss Jennings. 

“ No doubt of it,” I answered. 

She glanced at me as if she had been wounded, and her lips 
turned pale. Well, thought I, anticipation, to be sure, is often the 
worst part of an affair of this sort, but if the mere hearing of the 
Shark affects this little sweetheart so violently, how will the sight- 
ing of the craft serve her, and the boarding of her, if ever it comes 
to it? In a few minutes the yacht’s boat was returning, while yon 
saw the figure of old Puncheon clambering out of his main-chains 
over the bulwarks of the Wanderer. A little later and there were 
hands tailing onto the falls, the boat rising, dripping, to the davits, 
and the foretop-sail yard slowly pointing its arm to the wind ; then, 
to the full weight of the breeze sweeping, red with the sunset, 
into her hollowed canvas, the Bride leaned down, sullenly shoulder- 
ing the swell into foam wdth the first stubborn push of her bows, till, 
gathering way, she was once more swinging into the west and south, 
with the gloom of the evening growing into a windy vagueness on 
her lee beam ; while on the weather-quarter, black as indigo against 


.95 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 

the dull western redness, was the figure of the bark rolHng with 
filled maintop-sail over the long Atlantic heavings, and rapidly di- 
minishing into the fragile beauty of some exquisitely carved toy of 
ebony-wood on the skirts of the rising and falling fan-shaped stretch 
of seething paleness that marked the limits of the Bride^s wake. 

Wilfrid, who had been standing at the compass staring with a 
frown at the card, with his arras folded, while the men trimmed sail 
and started the yacht afresh, marched up to me when that business 
was over, and exclaimed, “ What did you make the average of the 
Shark's daily runs, according to Puncheon’s reckonings of the place 
of his meeting her?” 

“ About one hundred and eighty miles a day,” I answered. 

“ We haven’t been doing that, though !” 

“ No ; but wait a little,” said I ; “ let your Bride feel the trade- 
wind humming aloft.” 

“ Finn !” he bawled. The captain came running to us. Fetch 
the track chart, Finn. There’s light enough yet to see by.” 

The man disappeared, and very quickly returned with a handy 
chart of the world, which he unrolled and laid on top of the sky- 
light. We all overhung it. Miss Jennings among us. The men for- 
ward w'atched us curiously. Something in the manner of them sug- 
gested to the swift glance I sent their way that the perception our 
voyage was more serious, with a wilder, sterner purpose in it than 
they had imagined, was beginning to dawn upon them since Punch- 
eon’s visit. 

“ Mark the spot, Finn,” exclaimed Wilfrid, in the dogged voice 
of a man sullenly and obstinately struggling to master a feeling of 
exhaustion — “ the exact spot where the bark fell in with the Shark." 

Finn produced a parallel ruler, a pair of compasses, a pencil, and 
the like, calculated, and indicated the spot by a little cross. 

“ How short the distance she has sailed seems !” exclaimed Miss 
Jennings. 

“ Fifteen degrees of latitude, though,” said I ; “ these charts are 
mighty deceptive. A very small pencil-mark will cover a tremen- 
dously long course.” 

Wilfrid stood motionless, with his eyes fixed upon the mark Finn 
had made. He talked a little to himself, but voicelessly. The 
captain watched him nervously. My cousin came to himself with 
a start. “What will have been the Shark's course by magnetic 
compass, Finn, say from the latitude of the Scillies to the spot where 
the Wanderer met her ?” 


96 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


The captain put his parallel rules on the chart and named the 
coarse; what it was, I forget — south-west by south, I believe, or 
something near it. • 

“ Supposing the wind not to head her, Finn,” continued my cous- 
in, “ would she steer the same course down to the time when the 
Wanderer met her ?” 

“ No, your honor. There’s no call for Fidler any more than there 
is for me to go to the westward of Madeira.” 

“ Now, Finn, show me on this chart where, steering the course you 
are now heading, you will have arrived when you have run nine 
hundred miles.” 

“How’s her head?” sung out Finn to the fellow at the w'heel. 
The man answered. “You hear it, Sir Wilfrid?” said Finn. My 
cousin nodded. The captain put his rules on the chart, adjusting 
them to the course the Bride was then sailing, and the measure of 
nine hundred miles brought the mark he made to touch the cross 
that represented the Shark's place. “ That’s right, I think, Mr. 
Monson,” said he, turning a sober face of triumph on me. 

“ Quite right,” I answered ; and I spoke no more than the truth, 
for the poor fellow had made his calculations with laborious anxiety. 

Wilfrid clapped his hands together with a shout of laughter that 
carried his voice to a shriek almost, and without speaking a word he 
strode to the hatch and went below. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


97 


CHAPTER IX. 

A SQUALL. 

Although Finn’s calculations showed very well upon the chart, 
it will not be supposed I could find anything in them upon which 
to ground that hope of falling in with the Shark which had become 
a conviction with Wilfrid. The lookout man at our mast-head 
might, perhaps, on a clear day compass a range of some twenty 
miles, even thirty, if it came to a gleam of lofty canvas hovering 
over a hull a league or two past the slope of waters; but what was 
a view of this kind to signify in so vast an ocean as we had entered ? 
As I have elsewhere said, the difference of a quarter of a point 
would in a few hours, supposing a good breeze of wind to be blow- 
ing, carry the Bride wide of the wake of the Shark, and put the 
two yachts out of sight fair abreast of one another. 

Finn understood this as well as I ; but when I fell into a talk 
with him on the subject that evening — I mean the evening of the 
day on which we had spoken the Wanderer — he told me very hon- 
estly that the odds indeed were heavy against our heaving the Shark 
into view, though he was quite sure of out-sailing her if the course 
was to extend to the Cape of Good Hope ; but that as there was a 
chance of our picking her up — whether by luck, if I chose to think 
it so, or by his hitting with accuracy upon the line of direction that 
Fidler would take — he had made up his mind to regard the thing as 
going to happen, for his own ease of mind as well as to keep my 
cousin’s expectations lively and trusting. 

“ A man can but do his best, sir,” he said to me. “ Sir Wilfrid 
needs a deal of humoring; you can see that, sir. I knew all along, 
when he first came and told me what had happened, and gave me 
my orders, that the job of keeping him pacified would have to go 
hand in hand with the business of sailing the Bride and lighting 
upon the Shark, if so be she’s discoverable. My notion is that if 
you’re called upon so to act as to fit an employer’s taste, and keep 
ins views and wishes gratified, though by no more than maintaining 
expectation in him, the best thing is to tarn to and try to think as 
fur as you can the snnie way as he do, \ don’t mind savingj 

■ ■■ '7 


98 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


Monson, that I allow the whole of this here woyage to be as wague 
as wagueness can well be ; therefore why worrit over parts of it ? 
Suppose we overhaul the Shark, then it’ll be all right ; suppose we 
don't, then it won’t be for the want of trying.” 

This was the substance of Finn’s opinion as he imparted it to me 
that night. His sincerity touched me ; besides, I saw worry enough 
in the poor fellow to make me sorry for him. Indeed, I resolved 
from that hour to back him up, heartily agreeing with him that the 
adventure was quite too vague to justify anxiety in respect of any 
one detail of the programme. 

The weather was quiet when I went to bed that night. I came 
below from my long yarn with Finn, leaving a windy smear of moon 
over our mast-heads, and a dark sky going down from it to the ob- 
scured sea-line, with here and there a pale and vapory point of star 
hovering sparely over a wing of cloud that lay still in the dusk, as 
though what wind there was blew low upon the waters. The wide 
sea came to the yacht in a dusky throbbing,* like folds of gloom roll- 
ing with a sort of palpitation in them to the eye ; the foam glanced 
in places, but there was little weight in the wind, and the pallid 
spires of the yacht’s canvas floated nearly upright through the dark 
atmosphere, with a sound of the sob of water coming off her weath- 
er-bow, and the dead plash of the hidden billow falling without life 
from her quarter in a way that made one think there were fellows 
emptying buckets over the side abreast of the wheel. 

Wilfrid had been moody and reserved throughout the dinner, and 
retired early to bed. I sat an hour with Miss Laura, with the mild 
diversion of a draught-board between us; but we soon forgot to play 
in talking. We had been but a few days together, yet I had already 
made the discovery that I wonderfully enjoyed her company, and 
that I immensely relished a quality of arch naivete in her conversa- 
tion, which owed something of its effect to the contrast between a 
sort of coquettish sagacity in many things she said and the nun-like 
artlessness and virginal sweetness I seemed to And in the gentle, girl- 
ish regard of her charming eyes. I also observed in myself that the 
more I saw of her the more her beauty gained upon me. I never 
remember meeting a woman’s face that I would sooner have taken 
as a frank expression of mind ; there was a softness and delicacy of 
feature that one instinctively accepted as an illustration of habitual 
refinement and purity df thought. Her manner, save when aroused, 
was of engaging gentleness and tenderness, and her smile the most 
amiable of any I remember, Her position was of great delicacy, and 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


99 


could not have failed to/painfull}^ distress one of your self-conscious 
women. Our adventurfe, every reference^o it, every mention of the 
Sharks every expression in Wilfrid of grief, shame, temper, was, as 
it were, a rude withdrawal of the veil from before her sister’s frailty. 
There was no other lady on board to help her to bear, so to speak, 
the burden of the inevitable topic, and yet she never made it appear 
as though there were pain and shame to her in the subject outside her 
grief for Wilfrid, her eagerness that her sister should be recovered, 
her resentment against the man who had betrayed and dishonored 
his friend. 

I may fail to convey what I thought of her maidenly acceptance 
of her share in this strange adventure, but I am certain that nobody 
but a person of exquisite instincts could have acted as she did the 
delicate and exacting part allotted her by my cousin. 

The weather was still very quiet when I bade her good-night. I 
went to my cabin, and do not suppose I was ten minutes in my bed 
before I fell asleep. I awoke to a sound of a great roaring all about, 
accompanied by the cries of men on deck, the sharp flinging down 
of coils of rope, and the thunder of shaking canvas trembling in 
every fibre of the hull. My bunk was an ath wart-ship one, and I 
had turned in, to employ the proper sea parlance, with my head to 
wdndward ; but now the yacht was lying over on t’other side, and I 
awoke to find my heels in the air and the weight of my body upon 
my neck ; but the angle of the craft was so sharp that it was not 
without a prodigious amount of heaving and floundering I managed 
to get my legs over and to sit upright. 

A squall, thought I, feeling for my pillow, which I placed in the 
port end of my bedstead and once again lay down. A flash of sun- 
bright lightning glanced through the port-hole as though a gun had 
been fired into my cabin, and the interior glanced out into a noon- 
tide effulgence for one breathless instant, in which, however, I man- 
aged to catch sight of the angle formed by a coat with a stanchion, 
upon which it hung by a peg. Upon my word, it was as though 
the yacht was upon her beam-ends — such a heel as was not to be 
realized by one lying in a bunk or even sitting upright in it; then 
came the darkness like a sea of ink, rolling to the sight, in which 
the reflection of the flash still writhed, followed by a mighty shock 
of thunder, that died away in a hundred rattling peals as though 
’twas high mountainous land all around the horizon honey-combed 
with caverns and every peak as resonant as a hollow dome. 

^ sharp squall ! thought I, but tl^efe was too pauch noise for sleep. 


100 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


It was all hands on deck I was pretty sure by the numerous scamper- 
ings over ray head ; the harsh voices of the sailors bawling at the ropes 
would be swept into faint cries by the rush of the wind, and now and 
again a heavy lumpish sound that put a quiver into every plank, fol- 
lowed by a snarling noise like the hissing of half a dozen locomotives 
blowing off steam, was warrant enough to ears not unused to such 
sounds that the Bride was taking large doses of water in pretty free- 
ly over her rail. 

I lay quiet, and was presently sensible that the yacht was off the 
wind ; the righting of her was no small comfort ; she was manifestly 
going through it like a comet; the sea was now well aft, and the sug- 
gestion of swiftness I found in the mere feel of the hull, somehow or 
other, black .as my cabin was and the blacker as it remained for the 
flash of lightning, was accentuated by the thunderous rush of each 
surge outstripping us in the race and hurling its black length along 
the vessel’s side, and the fierce spitting and crackling of the smother 
of spume that was raised by the vessel’s headlong flight, and that 
went raging and racing astern on top of the swelling ebony fold that 
swept forward from the opposite direction. 

Humph ! thought I, if this is a case of “up keeleg” with friend 
Finn he’ll have to enter into something shrewder and surer than dead- 
reckoning to find his way back again into the Shark's wake. I had 
a mind to see what was happening, and after a spell of troublesome 
groping and clawing, during which I had like to have broke my nose 
by striking it against the edge of a chest of drawers built into a cor- 
ner, I succeeded in lighting my lamp, and was presently snug in a 
pea-coat and a sou’-wester, which I had been wise enough to include 
in the slender sea outfit I had purchased for this voyage. The cabin 
light was always kept burning throughout the night, dimmed by one 
of the stewards, after we had retired to our berths, but with plenty 
of flame left to see by, and on emerging the first object I caught 
sight of was the figure of a man on his knees on the cabin floor in a 
posture of prayer, and apparently in an agony of fright. Nothing 
was to be heard of him until I had approached close, for the roaring 
of the wind and the washing and foaming of seas drowned all other 
noises ; but on stooping to make sure of the fellow, whose hands were 
clasped over his eyes while he held his face upturned as he swayed 
upon his knees, I could hear him praying with all his might, with an 
energy indeed that might of itself have accounted for the drops of 
perspiration that glistened upon his brow, if it wasn’t that his atti- 
tude of terror explained the secret of that moisture. It w?is Muffin. 


Ax\ OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


101 


There was something so shameful in the fellow’s cowardice that all 
in an instant I lost my temper and gave him a kick which flung him 
at his length, face down, upon the deck. He set up a horrible howl. 

“ Oh, Lord ! oh, mercy ! we’re gone ! we’re gone ! Oh, if I was 
only on dry ground — ” 

Here I seized him by the collar. 

“Get up, you fool,” I cried. “Do you know where you are, you 
idiot? Cease! If you alarm Miss Jennings — ” and I hauled him 
on to his legs, shaking him heartily as I did so. 

“Oh, Mr. Mouson,” he whined, “is it you, sir? Tell me we ain’t 
all dead and gone, sir 1 Oh, this is ’orrible, though I ’orrible ! Never 
no more ; never no more for me 1” 

“ Be off to your berth at once,” cried I, angrily, though my tem- 
per died out of me at the absurd sight of his yellow, working, terri- 
fied face, rendered ugly enough to challenge the skill of a Cruikshank 
by the manner in which, during his devotions, he had streaked his 
forehead and nose and his cheeks past his eyes with his plaster-like 
lengths of coal-black hair. He was for speaking, but T grasped him 
by the shoulder and ran him towards his berth, that lay some little 
distance forward of mine on the starboard side, and when he had 
shut himself in I made my way on deck, with a peep aft, as I went 
up the steps, where all seemed quiet. 

The night was still very dark, but of a clearer dusk. The moon 
made a red streak low in the west among some ragged clouds that 
seemed to fall like a short flight of steps, every one edged with blood, 
to the sea-line, where the muddy crimson drained out, just showing 
the lurid staining of it now and again when some surge beneath reared 
an unbroken head to the lustre. The night was made to look amaz- 
ingly wilder than it was in reality by that western setting jumble of 
ugly lustre and torn vapor like a flock of giant bats heading from the 
moon for some ocean solitude of deeper blackness. To windward 
there was a great lake of indigo blue in the sky in which a number 
of trembling stars were floating, and vast white puffs of cloud cross- 
ing it with the swiftness of scud in a gale ; but to leeward it was just 
a mass of heaped-up gloom, one dye of dusk on top of another in 
blocks of blackness such as a poet might dream of in picturing the 
hellish walls and battlements of a beleaguered city of demons; and 
upon this mass of darkness that looked as. substantial as stone to the 
eye there was a plentiful play and crackle of violet lightning; but no 
thunder, at least none that I could hear. It was blowing fresh, but 
the wind had taken off considerably within the last ten minutes; the 


10 ^ 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


Bride was close-hauled ; there was a strong sea on the bow, and she 
was plunging smartly, with at frequent intervals a brisk squall of spray 
over her head that rattled upon the deck like a fall of hail in a thun- 
der-storm ; a dark gleam would break first here and then there from 
her deck to her rolling, but the water was draining off fast, flashing 
in a loud hissing through the scupper-holes at every lee send, but 
with weight enough yet remaining in each rush of it to enable me to 
gather that it must have been pretty nearly waist-high between the 
bulwarks with the first shipping of the seas and the first down-rush 
of the fierce squall. 

They had snugged the Bride to very small canvas; the play of the 
white waters round her threw out her shape clear as black paint on 
canvas; at moments she dived till you would think the tall black coil 
arching at her past the creaming glare crushed out of the sea by the 
smiting of her fore-foot must leap right aboard her; but her stanch 
and buoyant bow, the truest piece of ocean moulding I ever saw in a 
ship, would regularly swing with a leap to the peak of the billow, 
shattering it with a saucy disdain that seemed to be followed by an 
echo of derisive laughter in the yelling ring of the wind splitting 
upon the rigging or sweeping into the iron-hard cavities of the di- 
minished spaces of wan and spectral canvas. 

I took all this in as I stood a minute in the companion-hatch ; 
then perceiving the figure of a man to windward almost abreast of 
me, I crossed to him. It was Finn. 

“ Very ugly squall that, Mr. Monson,” said he, after peering at me 
to make sure of my identity, “ it found us with top-s’l and t’-gallant 
s’l set, and took us slap aback. It was the most onexpected thing 
that ever happened to me ; as onnatural as that there moon. Talk 
of keeping a lookout ! I was staring hard that way, with the wind a 
pleasant air blowing off t’other side, and saw nothing and heard noth- 
ing until I felt it.” 

“ You had to run ?” 

“Ay, but not for long, sir.” 

“ How’s her head now. Captain Finn ?” 

“ Her proper course, Mr. Monson.” 

“Well, the weather is brightening. You’ll be making sail again 
on your ship, I suppose, presently ?” 

“ Ay, but let that muck blow away first,” he answered, pointing 
with a shadowy arm into the mass of obscurity where the lightning 
still winked fitfully. “ After such a blow-me-aback job as this I ain’t 
going to trust the weather till I can see more of it.” 


AN ocean tragedy. 


103 


I lingered a little watching the slow opening of the sky to wind- 
ward, and the gradual unfolding of the stars down the velvet decliv- 
ity, that looked as though purified by the cleansing of the black wet 
squall, and then bidding good-night to Finn, who seemed a bit sub- 
dued by the wildly disconcerting attack of the weather, that to a 
sober, vigilant seaman was about as uncomfortable a snub in its way 
as could be administered. I went below, intending to walk straight 
to my berth and go to bed again. On entering the cabin, however, 
I found the lamp turned up, and Wilfrid pacing the carpet with long 
strides, and with an agitation of manner that was grotesquely deep- 
ened by the occasional stagger of his gait by the plunging of the 
yacht and the hurried lift of his arm to clutch the nearest thing at 
hand for support. I concluded that he had been aroused by the com- 
motion of the squall, but thought it strange he had not stepped on 
deck to see how things were. On seeing me he put his hand on the 
back of a fixed revolving chair, and swung, or rather reeled, himself 
into it, then leaned his cheek upon his hand in a posture of extreme 
moodiness, while he kept his eyes bent downward. 

I took a seat opposite him, after a glance round in search of Miss 
Jennings, who, I thought, might also be up. 

“The noise above disturbed you, I suppose, Wilfrid?” said I. 

“ I have not slept,” he answered. 

“Not since half-past nine? You went to bed then, you know, 
and it’s now two o’clock,” I exclaimed, looking at the dial under the 
skylight. 

“ I have not slept,” he repeated. 

“ I wonder that the squall did not bring you on deck.” 

“ For what purpose ?” he exclaimed, gloomily. “ I could hear 
Finn’s voice ; I could follow what the men were doing. If every 
squall we are likely to meet is to bring me from my bed, I may as 
well order a hammock to be slung for me on deck.” 

“What is the matter, Wilfrid?” said I, earnestly and soothingly. 
“ Something, I fear, has happened to vex and bother you.” 

He passed his hand over his eyes, and looking down, said, “I 
have had a warning.” 

“A what?” I exclaimed. 

“A warning,” he answered, fetching a deep sigh and making as if 
to rise, retaining, however, his posture of profound melancholy, while 
he sent a slow, wandering look around, finally fastening his eye 
upon me. 

“ From whom came this warning, Wilfrid ?” said I, cheerfully. 


104 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Muffin ? Egad, 3 ’ou’Jl be getting a warning from him soon, T reclv- 
on. I found the chap on his knees just now, sweating with fear 
and praying like clock-work. T gave him a kick, and I wonder the 
howl that he raised did not bring you running out of your cabin.” 
I jabbered this off in a reckless, laughing way, though I watched 
him narrowly, too, all the time I was speaking. 

“ Nothing shall hinder me, Charles,” he exclaimed, closing his 
right fist and letting it lie' in a menacing way upon the table. “ I 
have made up ray mind to tear the creature who still remains my 
wife from the side of the man she has left me for ; and before God ” 
— he rolled his eyes up and raised his clinched hand — “my vow is 
this : that I will hunt them from port to port, through ocean after 
ocean, until I meet with them! When that shall be I know not; 
but this I do know — that my time will come and I can wait. But 
I must be on the move. Nothing could render life tolerable to me 
now but the sense of action, the animation and hope of pursuit.” 

“But the warning — ” said I. 

“ Oh, to be vexed by ghostly exhortations — it is enough to craze 
one 1” he exclaimed. “ Heaven knows, resolution grows weak enough 
in me as it is at any thought of my little one that visits me. Oh 
no,” he cried, with a sarcastic shake of the head and a singular 
smile, “ do not believe that thoughts of my baby girl would cause 
me to falter even for one breathless instant on this course that I 
have made up my mind to pursue. But to think of the helpless 
lamb as alone — ” 

“My dear fellow,” I interrupted, “the child could not possibly be 
in tenderer hands.” 

“ I know, I know,” he cried, with a sob in his voice, “ but she is 
motherless, Charles ; and then how precarious is life at that age 1 I 
may never see her again !” 

He broke down at this, and hid his face. 

“ Come, come,” said I, “your nerves have been strained by the in- 
cident of this afternoon, or, I should sa^^, of yesterday afternoon — 
unduly, though intelligibly, excited by Puncheon’s report of having 
passed the Shark. Endeavor to get some rest, old fellow. These 
warnings, these visions, mysterious voices sounding out of Heaven 
knows where, midnight shapes as thin as moonshine — Wilfrid, de- 
pend upon it, they all etnanate from a disordered condition of that 
part of the body which the Chinese have most wisely selected as 
the true seat of the soul ; I mean here,” said I, patting my waistcoat. 

He regarded me Somewhat vacantly, and sat a while in silence, 


AK ocean TilAGEDY. 


lO^i 

sighed tremulously, and stepped to the foot of the companion-ladder, 
where he stood staring up into the arch of black night that filled the 
companion-entrance. Presently Finn rumbled out an order on deck. 
There was the flash of bright stars upon the gleaming ebony of the 
cabin windows with every heave of the yacht; the sea was moderat- 
ing, and the loud humming of the wind aloft gradually fining into a 
dull complaining noise. Ropes were thrown down overhead ; voices 
began to sing out. I uttered a loud yawn. Wilfrid turned and ex- 
claimed, “ Don’t let me keep you up, Charles.” 

“ It’s all right,” said I, “ but why not go to bed, too ? Or first 
describe this warning that you have had — express the nature of it. 
Perhaps, like the proverbial on-looker who sees most of the game, I 
might be able to help you with some reassuring suggestion.” 

But he merely shook his head ; and now, feeling quite intolerably 
sleepy, and in no mood, therefore, as you will suppose, to reason with 
a mind so oppressed as his with superstitious melancholy, I called 
a cheery good-night to him, w^ent to my cabin, and was soon asleep. 

I was awakened by the brilliant daylight that filled my berth, and 
at once rose and sung out to the steward to prepare me a bath. 
All the time I bathed and dressed I was thinking of Wilfrid and of 
what he called his “ warning.” I supposed it w^as some voice that 
he had heard, and he had made it plain that it had referred, among 
other things maybe, to his little infant. Now, though of course I 
had known for years that he was “touched,” as the expression goes, 
I had never understood that his craziness had risen to the height of 
hearing voices and beholding visions in his waking hours; and I 
was, tlierefore, forced to believe that his mind was far more unhinged 
at present than his manners and speech, peculiar as they unquestion- 
ably were at times, had indicated. Well, thought I, assuredly if he 
gets worse, if the symptoms should grow more defined, this chase 
will have to come to an end. I, for one, should most certainly call a 
halt. Why, what could be fuller of madness than his vow last night 
before me — to go on sailing from port to port, and traversing ocean 
after ocean, until he has captured her ladyship; as if a pursuit on 
such lines as these were going to end in anything better than driving 
all hands daft and converting the Bride into a floating lunatic asylum ? 
So far, it is true, I have found method enough to keep my mind 
tolerably easy ; but if poor Wilfrid is going to become very much 
worse, hang me, thought I, plying a pair of hair-brushes with very 
agitated hands, if Captain Finn don’t haul his wind for the l^and- 
iest port and set me ashore for one. 


106 


an ocean tragedy. 


CHAPTER X. 

I GO ALOFT. 

It was a fresh, sweet ocean morning, one of the fairest I remem- 
ber; the wind, a tender fanning from the west, warm enough to 
make one fancy an odor and balm of the tropics in it, leagues ahead 
as those parallels yet lay. The sky was one broad surface of curls 
and feathers of pearl-colored vapor, an interweaving, as it were, of 
many-shaped links of silken cloud shot with silver and amber and 
gold from the early sun. I never beheld a lovelier dome of sky 
so tender in glory and rich in delicate perfections of tints. The 
sea spread in a firm dark line to it, like a blue floor under some 
mighty roof of marble ; the sun’s wake came in a misty stream of 
light to the port bends of the yacht, where it was flashed by the mir- 
ror-like wet blackness of the glossy side back deep into the brim- 
ming azure of the brine in a great puff of radiance that made one 
think of a cloud of brightly illuminated steam ascending from the 
depths. 

Everything was brilliant and clean and cheerful, the decks of the 
white softness of foam, brass sparkling, rigging flemish-coiled or fes- 
tooned as by an artist’s hand upon the pins ; forward stood the long 
cannon radiant as polished jet, a detail that gave an odd significance 
to the saucy knowing “ spring,” as it is called, of the yacht that way. 
The cocks and hens in the coops were straining their throats, and 
blending with their cheerful voices was a noise of pigs ; there was 
black smoke pouring away from the galley chimney, and now and 
again you got a whiff of something good frying for the men’s break- 
fasts, for my cousin fed his sailors well. The Bride^ with erect masts, 
was sliding over the wide folds of water, whose undulations were so 
long-drawn and regular as to be scarce perceptible in the motion of 
the vessel ; there was air enough to crisp the sea, and where the sun’s 
light lay the tremble was blinding ; on either bow was a curl of sil- 
ver, and pale eddyings alongside, with a line of oil-smooth water 
going away astern from under the counter; yet We were but creep- 
ing too, spite of the yacht being a pile of white cloths — every stitch 
she owned abroad to her top-gallant studding-sail. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEOV. 


107 


The mate had charge, and was stumping the weather side of the 
quarter-deck in his sour way when I arrived. 

“ Good-morning, Mr. Crimp.” 

“ Marning,” he answered. 

“ Ugly squall that last night.” 

“ Ugly ? ay.” 

The fellow gave the word sir to no man, restricting its use when 
ashore to dogs, as Finn once told me ; but his surly tricks of speech 
and manner were so wholly a part of him, so entirely natural, so un- 
consciously expressed, that it would have been as idle to resent them 
as to have quarrelled with him for having an askew eye or lost one’s 
temper because his beard resembled rope-yarns. 

“Anything in sight?” I asked, looking round. 

“Ay,” he answered. 

“ Where ?” I exclaimed, running ray eye over the sea. 

“ Up yonder,” he responded, indicating with a gesture of his chin 
the top-gallant yard, where was perched the inevitable figure of a 
lookout man. 

“ But where away, Mr. Crimp — where away, sir ?” 

“ On the starboard bow,” he answered; “ ’tain’t long been sighted.” 

Breakfast would not be ready for some time yet, and having noth- 
ing to do, I thought I would make a journey aloft on my own ac- 
count, and take a view of the distant sail and of the spacious field 
of the glittering morning ocean from the altitude of the mast-head. 
I stepped below for a telescope of my own, a glass I had many a 
time ogled the sea with when I was doing penance for past and fut- 
ure sins in African and West Indian waters. Muffin was at the foot 
of the companion-steps holding a pair of Wilfrid’s boots. He cast 
his eyes down and drew his figure in, though there was abundance 
of room for me to pass. A slow, obsequious, apologetic smile went 
twisting and curling down his lips ; his yellow face had a burnished 
look ; he was uncommonly clean-shaven, and his hair was brushed, 
or plastered, to the smoothness of his skull. 

“ Got your courage back ?” said I. 

“Thank you, yes, sir,” he answered, humbly, with his eyes re- 
spectfully cast down. “Richard’s himself again this morning, sir, 
as the saying is. But it was a ’orrible time, sir.” 

“You came near to making it so,” said I. “Have you been to 
Sir Wilfrid yet?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ How is he?” 


108 


AN ocean TIUGEDY. 


“ Asleep, sir,” he replied, in a blandly confidential way. 

“Glad to hear it,” I exclaimed; “don’t disturb him. He passed 
a bad night down to two or three o’clock this morning.” I was go- 
ing; suddenly I stopped. “By-the-way,” said I, rounding upon the 
fellow, “ how long have you been in Sir Wilfrid’s service ?” 

My question appeared to penetrate him with a consuming desire 
to be exact. He partially closed one eye, cocked the other aloft like 
a hen in the act of drinking, and then said, with the air of one hap- 
py in the power of speaking with accuracy, “ It’ll be five months to 
the hour, sir, come height o’clock Friday evening next.” 

“During the time that you have been in his service,” said I, care- 
lessly, “ have you ever heard him speak of hearing voices or seeing 
visions?” 

“ Woices? No, sir,” he answered ; “ but wisions,” he added, with 
a sigh, and lengthening his yellow face into an expression of deep 
concern, “ has, I fear, sir, more’n once presented theirselves to him.” 

“ Of what nature, do you know ?” 

“ Sir Wilfrid’s a little mysterious, sir,” he responded, in a greasy 
tone of voice, and looking down as if he would have me understand 
that with all due respect he was my cousin’s valet, and knew his 
place. 

I said no more, but made my way on deck with a suspicion in me 
that the fellow had lied, though I hardly knew why I should think 
so. I trudged forward, and finding three or four of the men hang- 
ing about the galley, I pulled out five shillings and gave the money 
to one of them, saying that I was going aloft, and wished to pay my 
footing, for I was in no temper to be chased and worried. This 
made me free of the rigging, into which I sprang, and had soon 
shinned as high as the top-gallant yard, upon which I perched my- 
self so noiselessly that the man who overhung it on the other side of 
the mast, and who was drowsily chewing upon a quid of tobacco, 
with his eye screwed into W’'ilfrid’s lovely telescope, had no notion 
I was alongside of him. I coughed softly, for I had known seamen 
to lose their lives when up aloft by being suddenly startled. He put 
a whiskered face past the mast, and stared at me as if I was Old 
Nick, out of the minutest pair of eyes I ever saw in the human head, 
mere gimlet-holes they seemed for the admission of light. 

“Thinking of your sweetheart. Jack?” said I, with a laugh, igno- 
rant of his name, but counting Jack to be a sure word. 

“ Can’t rightly say what I was a-thinking of, sir,” he answered, 
hoarsely ; “ ’twarn’t my sweetheart anyways, seeing that the only 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


109 


jOjoll I was ever really partial to sarved me as her ledship sarved Sir 
Wilfrid yonder,” indicating the quarter-deck with a sidewise mo- 
tion of his head. 

“ Cut stick, eh ?” said I. 

“ Wuss than that, sir,” he answered. “ If she’d ha’ taken herself 
off and stopped at that I dunno as I should have any occasion to 
grumble; but she prigged the furniture that I’d lain in agin getting 
married. Ky, prigged it. The boiling amounted to fourteen pound 
tew, a bloomin’ lot o’ money for a poor seafaring man to be robbed 
of for the sake of a master chimney-sweep.” He cast a slow, dis- 
gusted look around, and expectorated with an air of loathing. 

“I hope you got the master chimney-sweep locked up,” said I. 

“No fear!” cried he, talking very fast; “smite me, your honor, 
if that there gell didn’t tarn to and swear that that furniture was 
hers, bought out of her own savings, and that she guv me the money 
to order it with. Thinking o’ my sweetheart!” he grumbled, lift- 
ing the telescope in an abstracted manner to his eye, “if it worn’t 
for women dummed if this ’ere earth wouldn’t be worth a-living 
in.” 

I smothered a laugh, and catching sight of the sail shining faintly 
in the blue air, leagues and leagues distant, as it seemed, I pointed 
the glass, and easily distinguished the royal, top-gallant sail, and a 
snatch of the top-sail, of a ship heading directly for us. 

“I wonder if she’ll have any news?” said I. 

“Beg your pardon, sir,” exclaimed the man, “but could you tell 
me how long it’s reckoned in the cabin this here ramble’s a-going to 
last?” 

“ What was the nature of the voyage you signed for?” 

“ Why,” he replied, “a yachting cruise to Table Bay and home.” 

“ It’ll not exceed that, I believe,” I exclaimed. 

“ And if we picks up that there Sharks and recovers the lady 
afore we git to the Cape, shall we keep all on or shift our helium for 
Southamptin again ?” 

“ Captain Finn will be able to tell yon more about it than I,” I 
responded, in a tone that silenced him, though his tiny eyes looked 
athirst for information as he regarded me aslant over one of his huge 
whiskers. 

The height from which I surveyed the vast plain of sea, the spirit 
of whose loneliness seemed to find the one touch of emphasis it 
needed to render its magnitude realizable by human instincts in that 
I’eraote flaw of ship’s cwvas which broke the continuitjr pf the 


110 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


boundless horizon, filled me with a feeling of exhilaration I cannot 
express ; the sweet mild ocean breeze high on that slender yard sank 
through and through me, and vitality to its most secret recesses was 
quickened by it into a very intoxication of life — new, free, ardent; 
the air hummed gently in a vibratory metallic note as though it were 
some echo of a distant concert of harps and violins; far down the 
hull of the yacht, plentiful as was her beam in reality, looked like a 
long, slender plank rounded at the bows, the whiteness of the deck 
showing with a sort of radiance, as though it were thinly sheeted 
with crystal, upon which the shadows of the rigging, masts, and can- 
vas lay dark and beautifully clear, with a fitful swaying of them to 
the heave of the fabric, off polished and brilliant things, such as the 
skylight or the brass decorations, when flashes of fire would leap 
forth, to be veiled again in the violet gloom of the recurrent shade. 
The thin curve of form on either hand the cut-water looked like 
frosted silver ; my eye went to the airy confines of the ocean spread- 
ing out into a delicate haze of soft azure light where it washed the 
marble of that magnificent morning firmament, and then it was that, 
sharper than ever I had before felt it, there rose the perception in 
me of the incalculable odds against our sighting the yacht we were 
in pursuit of, so measureless did the ocean distance appear when, 
with gaze going from the BrMs mast-head, I thought of the dis- 
tance that made the visible and compassable sphere, big as it was, as 
little as a star compared with the heavenly desert it floats in. 

When I looked down again I observed Miss Jennings watching 
me from the gangway, with her hand shading her eyes. I raised 
iny hat and she bowed, and being wishful of her company, I bade 
my friend Jack keep his eyes polished, as the piece that was nailed 
to the mast would help to lessen the loss that his sweetheart had 
occasioned him, and descended, hearing him rumbling in his gizzard 
as I got off the foot-rope, though what he said I did not catch. 

“What is there to be seen, Mr. Monson?” was Miss Jennings’s 
first question, with a delicate fire of timorous expectation in her eyes. 

“ Only a ship,” said I. 

“ Not— not— •” 

“ No, not the Shark yet,” I exclaimed, smiling. 

“ I am stupid to feel so nervous. I dare say I am as passionately 
anxious as Wilfrid to s^e rny sister in this vessel safe — and sepa- 
rated from — from — ” she faltered, and quickly added, bringing her 
hands together and locking them, “ But I dread the moment to ar- 
rive when the Shdvh will be reported in sight.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


Ill 


“ Well, if we are to pick up that craft,” said I, ‘‘ we shall do so, 
and then there’ll be an end pn’t. But I give you my word. Miss 
Jennings, the ocean looks a mighty big place from that bit of a stick 
up there.” 

“ Too big for this chase ?” 

“ Too big, I fear, to give Wilfrid the chance he wants.” 

She sent a bright glance at the top-gallant yard, and said, “Does 
not that great height make you feel dizzy ?” 

“ Ay, as wine does. There is an intoxication as of ether in the 
air up there. Oh, Miss Jennings, if I could only manage to get you 
onto that yard — see how near to heaven it is ! — you would then be 
able not only to say that you looked like an angel, but that you felt 
like one.” 

She laughed prettily, and turned as if to invite me to walk. Af- 
ter a bit I spoke of the squall last night. It had not disturbed her. 
Then I told her of Wilfrid’s melancholy perturbation, on which her 
face grew grave, and her air thoughtful. 

“ He did not tell you the nature of the warning ?” she inquired. 

“ No. It evidently had reference to his baby. I wished to ascer- 
tain whether it was a voice or a vision, though I really don’t know 
w’Ay, for an hallucination is an hallucination all the world over, and 
it signifies little whether it be a sheeted essence to affect the eye or 
a string of airy syllables to affright the ear.” 

“ I am sorry, I am sorry,” she exclaimed, anxiously ; “ it is a bad 
symptom, I fear. Yet it ought not to surprise one. The shock was 
terrible — so recent, too ! Scarcely a fortnight ago he felt safe and 
happy in his wife’s love and faith — ” 

“ Maybe,” I interrupted ; “ but I wouldn’t be too sure, though. 
When I last met him — I mean some while before he came to ask 
me to join him in this trip — his manner was very clouded, I thought, 
when he spoke of his wife. I fancy even then suspicion was some- 
thing more than a seed. But still, as you say, it is all desperately 
recent, and it certainly is a sort of business to play havoc with such 
a mind as his. Did you ever hear of his having warnings or seeing 
visions before?” 

“ Never.” 

“I asked his valet that question just now, and he told me he did 
not know that his master heard ‘ woices,’ but he believed he was 
troubled with ‘ wisions,’ as he called them.” 

“ Wilfrid has been very secret,Then. My sister spoke much to 
me of the oddness of bis character — made more of it, indeed, than 


112 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


ever I could witness — but, then, one understands why now,” she 
exclaimed, with an angry toss of her head ; “ but she never once 
hinted at his suffering from delusions of the kind you name. How 
should his man know, then ? Wilfrid is not a person to be so very 
confidential as all that with his servant. I never liked Muffin, and I 
believe he is a story-teller.” 

“ So do I,” said I, “ and a coward to boot ;” and I told her of my 
finding him on his knees, and how I had prostrated him with a kick. 
This provoked one of her cordial, sweet, clearing laughs. It was a 
music to fit to gayer thoughts than we had been discoursing, and 
presently we were chatting lightly about dress, society, some maes- 
tro’s new opera, and other light topics, very much more suitable for 
a yacht’s quarter-deck under such a morning heaven as was then 
shining upon us than the raven, owl, and bat-like subjects of ghosts, 
warnings, visions, and insanity. 

The breakfast -bell rang; MuflSn arrived with a soap - varnished 
face and a humble bow, and in greasy accents delivered his master’s 
compliments to us, and please we were not to wait breakfast for him. 
But when we were half through the meal Wilfrid came from his 
cabin and seated himself. He looked worn and worried; his ex- 
pression was that of a man who has succeeded in calming himself 
after a secret bitter mental conflict, but whose countenance still 
wears the traces of his struggle. He called for a cup of tea, which, 
with a slice of dry toast, formed his breakfast. Now and again I 
saw him glancing wistfully at Miss Jennings, but his eyes fell from 
her when she looked at him, as though he feared the detection of 
some wish or thought in the manner of his watching her. He in- 
quired languidly about the weather, the sail the yacht was under, 
and the like. 

“ There’ll be a ship in sight over the bow,” said I, “ by the time 
we are ready to go on deck.” 

“ Ha !” he exclaimed, instantly briskening, “ we must speak her. 
Were it to come to twenty vessels a day passing us we should hail 
them all. But it is the wind’s capriciousness that makes the fretting 
part of an excursion of this kind. Here are we creeping along as 
though in tow of one of our boats, while where the Shark is there 
may be half a gale driving her through it as fast as a whale’s first 
rush to the stab of a harpoon.” 

“ Heels were given to us in the small hours of this morning, 
though,” said I. “ We covered more space of sea in five minqtea 
than I should like to swim if I had n month to do it in,” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


113 


“ Oh, but she was off her course,” exclaimed Wilfrid. 

“ Only to the first of the squall,” I exclaimed. “ When I went 
on deck she was lying fair up again, and crushing through it with 
the obstinacy of a liner.” 

He glanced at me absently, as though he barely attended to my 
words, and then looked round him, as I supposed, to observe if Muf- 
fin and the stewards were out of hearing. He lay back in his chair, 
eying Miss Jennings for a little with a thoughtful regard that was 
made pathetic by the marks of care and grief in his face. 

“ Laura,” he said, “ I am worrying about baby.” 

“ Why, Wilfrid?” she answered, gently. 

“ Oh, it may be a mere instinctive anxiety — some secret misgiving, 
well founded, but quite inexplicable, and therefore to be sneered at 
by friend Charles here, who knows not yet the subtleties of a flesh- 
and-blood tie, as mere sentiment.” 

“ But why allow a fancy to worry you, Wilfrid ?” said I. 

“ I fear it is no fancy,” he answered, quickly. 

“I told Miss Jennings,” said I, “that you have been vexed and 
upset by what you interpreted into a warning.” 

“ Did it particularly refer to baby ?” she asked. 

“ Wholly,” he responded, gloomily. 

“But, confound it all, Wilfrid,” cried I, somewhat impatiently, 
“won’t you put this miserable vision into words? What form did 
it take? A warning! — if you choose to view things asquint they’re 
full of warnings. Consider the superstitions which flourish ; the 
signs of luck and of ill-luck ; the meaning of the stumble on the 
threshold, the capsized salt-cellar, and the rest of the inventions of 
the wicked old hags who ride a cock-horse on broomsticks. Why,” 
I cried, talking vehemently, with the idea of breaking through the 
thickness upon his mind, though it was no better than elbowing a 
fog, “ I protest, Wilfrid, I would rather swing at your lower yard- 
arm, and be cut down after a reasonable time to plomh the deep peace 
of the green silence beneath our keel, than live in a torment of ap- 
prehension of shadows, and convert life into a huge mustard-poultice 
to adjust my quivering anatomy, staggering onward to the grave.” 

He surveyed me with a lack-lustre eye while he listened. 

“Might not this warning, as you call it, Wilfrid,” said Miss Jen- 
nings, “ have been some brief, vivid dream, the impression of which 
was keen enough, when you awoke, to make you imagine you had 
viewed what had appeared with open eyes?” 

“No!” he answered, emphatically; “ what I saw I saw as I see you.” 
$ 


114 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Then it wasn’t a voice ?” I exclaimed. 

“ No matter,” he said ; “ God’s eye is upon the innocent. Surely 
He will protect my little one. Still — still — ” He seemed to strug- 
gle with some thought, and paused. 

I made up my mind to attempt a bold stroke. “ Wilf,” said I, 
“your child must be dearer to you than your wife. Since you are 
uneasy about the bairn, why not abandon a pursuit which, I give 
you my word, seems to me about as aimless as a chase after the fly- 
ing shadow of a cloud, and shift your helm for home, where you will 
be able to have the child by your side, and where there will be no 
need for warnings relating to her to worry you ?” 

A dangerous light came into his eyes; his strangely cut nostrils 
enlarged and trembled ; half a dozen dark moods went like ripples 
of shadow over his face. I regarded him steadfastly, but I will own 
not without a good deal of anxiety, for his bearing at this moment 
had more of the madman in it than I had ever before witnessed. 
He breathed deep several times before speaking. 

“ You are right,” he said ; “ my child is dearer to me than my 
wife, but my honor stands first of all. For God’s sake do not craze 
me with such suggestions. Look at me !” he cried, extending his 
arms, “gripped here,” clasping his left hand, “by my child, that in 
its sweet innocence would withhold me from this pursuit ; and 
dragged here” — and here he clinched his right hand with a menacing 
shake of it — “ by a sense of duty that must have its way, though it 
should come to my never setting eyes on my baby again. Charles ” — 
his voice sank — “ at your hands I should have expected something 
better than such advice as this. If you are weary of the voyage — ” 

“ No, no,” I interrupted. 

“ Why torment me, then,” he shouted, “ by representing this pur- 
suit as idle as a chase of shadows? Is it so ? Great Heaven, man, 
you yourself read out the entry in Captain Puncheon’s log-book.” 

“Well, well, Wilfrid,” said I, soothingly, “I am very sorry to 
have said anything to annoy you. The fact is, I am too prosaic in 
my views of things to be as helpful as I should like to be in a quest 
of this sort. Come, shall we go on deck now, and see if that chap 
which I sighted from the top-gallant yard has hove into view yet ?” 

The poor fellow rose slowly from his chair, straightening up his 
figure till he looked twice as tall again as he was. His anger had 
left him, 

“ Oh for the privilege,” he exclaimed, “ of being able to catch but 
a single glimpse of the future ! Would to Heaven I had been born 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


115 


a saint, with a glory around my head, for by that light only is it 
possible to interpret the hieroglyphs in which the page of life is 
printed.” 

“ Miss Jennings,” said I, “ your sunny hair comes so near to the 
sort of nimbus my cousin desires that I am sure if you would cast 
your eyes upon the mystical page that puzzles him you could read 
it aloud to us both by the light of those golden tresses.” 

“ Charles,” exclaimed Wilfrid, shortly, “ you are for making fun 
of everything;” and he stalked to his cabin, but only to fetch his 
pipe, as I afterwards found. 

I could not discover, however, that Miss Jennings wholly agreed 
in Wilfrid’s notion of my ridiculing propensity. 


116 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XL 

THE PORTUGUESE BRIG. 

Right over the bows on either hand the sky had cleared since 
the early morning ; the fairy drapery of linked, prismatic, shell-like 
cloud had lifted, leaving the sea-line a dark blue sweep of water 
against the delicate effulgence of the heavens, and like a star climb- 
ing above that most exquisite horizon shone the sail that was ap- 
proaching us, still distant a fair eight miles, but already distinctly 
visible from the low altitude of the Bride's quarter-deck. Sir Wilfrid, 
leaning over the side, sent a long, yearning look at her; then, with 
a glance at the man on the top-gallant yard, he walked over to Finn, 
who had relieved the mate at eight bells, and conversed with him. 
I got a chair for Miss Jennings, fetched hef novel — the end of the 
first volume of which seemed still as far off as the Cape of Good 
Hope — and a rug for her feet, and having made her comfortable, I 
loaded a pipe and squatted myself on deck under the lee of the 
main-mast. 

I was not, perhaps, in the very sweetest of tempers, for though 
what I had said below might have been a bit provoking, Wilfrid had 
turned upon me for it a little too hotly methought. This expedition, 
to be sure, had a special interest for him, as it had a special interest 
for Miss Jennings ; but so far as I was concerned, it was a mere sym- 
pathetic undertaking. My cousin, to be sure, was “ wanting,” but 
that consideration was not going to render any indignation I might 
unwarily provoke in him the more endurable. My quarrel, however, 
just then lay with myself. I was beginning to consider that I had 
joined Wilfrid in this cruise too hurriedly ; that had I insisted upon 
more time for reflection I should have declined the adventure, for the 
very good reason that lyWas unable to see how I could be of the 
least use to him in it. ^^Iie ocean makes people selfish ; its monot- 
ony presses upon and contracts the mind as its visible girdle circum- 
scribes the sight. Thought is forced inward, and the intellect de- 
vours itself as the monkey eats its tail. / I was already pining some- 
what for the diversions of the shorey^ Had I been sensible of any 
limit to the daily and nightly routine of eating, sleeping, keeping a 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


117 


lookout, and discussing probabilities, my humor might have lightened 
somewhat: but on what date was this voyage to end? Where was 
this white fabric that was floating in beauty over the quiet w'aters 
going to carry me? Heavy clouds of smoke floated from my lips 
when I thought that for months and months I might be sundered 
from my club, from the opera, of which I was a very great lover, from 
the engaging recreation of billiards, from the quarter of a hundred of 
pleasures with which the idle man of means loads the blunderbuss 
of life to shoot at and kill the flying hours as they pass. 

Poor Wilfrid, though! I thought with a sigh; and an emotion 
of pity rose in me as a rebuke when I glanced at his long,' awkward 
figure, thought of the bitter heartache that left him only when he 
slept, of his love for his little one, of the dreadful grief and dishonor 
that had come to him, of this apparently aimless pursuit upon the 
boundless surface of the ocean of a faithless woman, with the subtle 
distressing quality of madness in all he did, in all he thought, to 
make his conduct a sadder thing than can be described. 

I peeped around the mast for a short view of Miss Jennings. She 
seemed to have lighted on a chapter in the novel that was interest- 
ing. Under the droop of her long lashes her half-closed, violet eyes 
showed with a drowsy gleam ; her profile had the delicacy of a 
cameo, clear and tender, against the soft gray of the bulwarks past 
her. Deuced odd, thought I, that I should find her prettiness so fas- 
cinating, as though, forsooth, she was the first sweet girl I had ever 
seen ! I filled another pipe and sat a while puffing slowly, with these 
lines of haunting beauty running in my head : 

“Have you seen but a bright lily grow 
Before rude hands have touched it? 

Have you marked but the fall of the snow 
Before the soil hath smutch’d it? 

Have you felt the wool of the beaver — 

Or swan’s-down ever? 

Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the brier ? 

Or the nard in the fire? 

Or have tasted the bag of the bee ? 

Oh, so white ! Oh, so soft 1 Oh, so sweet is she !” 

The poet is also the prophet ; and maybe, thought I, when old 
Ben Jonson planned this fairy temple of words he had his eye on 
some such another little delicate goddess as that yonder. 

But there was to happen presently something of a kind to send 
sentiment flying. 


118 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


Bit by bit the cloud-mailed sky had drawn away down into the 
northward, until far past our mast-heads that way it was clear blue 
heaven, with an horizon ruling it of a sort of transparent sharpness 
that made you imagine you saw the atmosphere beyond through it 
as though it were the edge of some huge lens. The breeze was 
weak, and the yacht’s pace very leisurely ; there were hints of a calm 
at hand, here and there in certain long, glassy swathes which wound 
like currents among the darker shadow of the wrinkling breeze upon 
the water; to every small roll upon the long, sleepy undulation the 
main-boom swung in with a short rattle of canvas in the head of 
the sail, and a flap or two forward with the smite of the mast by the 
square top-sail, as though there were hands aloft lazily beating a carpet. 

The vessel ahead was steering dead for us, her masts in one. She 
was much smaller than I had supposed from the first glimpse I 
caught of her from the mast-head — a little brig, apparently, her cloths 
showing out rusty to the brilliance as she neared us, albeit afar they 
had shone like a star of white fire. Her hull was of a dirty yellow 
— a sort of pea-soup color — and the foot of her foresail was spread 
by a bentinck-boom. She was without an atom of interest in my 
eyes — a small foreigner, as I supposed, sluggishly lumbering home 
to some Spanish or Italian port with her forecastle filled with choc- 
olate-colored Dagos, and the cabin atmosphere poisonous with the 
lingering fumes of bad cooking. 

Wilfrid and Finn stood looking at her together, the latter raising 
a glass to his eye from time to time. I knocked the ashes out of 
my bowl and crossed over to them. 

“ It will be strange if she has any news to give us of the Shark,' 
said I. 

“ We will speak her, of course,” said Wilfrid. 

“ Looks as if she meant to give us the stem,” exclaimed Finn, with 
a glance aft at the fellow at the helm : “ she is steering dead on for 
us, as if her course were a bee-line and we were athwart it.” 

“ I expect she’ll not be able to talk to you in English,” said I. 

“ What is her country, do you think, Mr. Monson ?” asked Miss 
Jennings, closing her volume and joining us. 

“ Italian. What say you, captain ?” 

“ Well, I can’t rightly tell what she is,” he answered, “ but I 
know what she ain’t — and that’s English.” He stepped aft, bent on 
the ensign, and ran it aloft. 

“ Does she see us ?” exclaimed Wilfrid. “ Really she is steering as 
if she would run us down.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


119 


I took the captain’s glass and brought it to bear. She was bow 
on, and there was no sign of a head over the forecastle-rail — nothing 
living in the rigging or upon the yards either; the foresail con- 
cealed the run of her abaft. 

“ She appears derelict,” said I, “ with her helm secured amidships, 
and blowing like the wind — as she listeth.” 

“ Time to get out of her road, I think,” grumbled Finn. “ Down 
helium 1” 

The turn of a spoke or two brought the stranger on the lee bow. 
Then it was that, on taking another view of her through the glass, 
I observed a couple of men standing near a jolly-boat, that swung 
at a pair of heavy wooden davits like a Nantucket whaler’s on the 
quarter. One of them wore a red cap resembling an inverted flower- 
pot ; the other, while he addressed his companion, gesticulated with 
inconceivable vehemence. 

“ Foreigners of a surety !” said I ; “ they’ll have no news for us.” 

All continued quiet ; the two vessels approached each other slowly; 
the stranger now proving herself, as I had supposed her, a brig of 
about a hundred and eighty tons, as dirty a looking craft as ever I 
saw, stained in streaks about the hull, as though her crew washed 
the decks down with the water in which they boiled their meat; her 
rigging slack and gray for want of tar ; the clews of her sails gaping 
at a distance from her yard-arms ; and at her main-mast head an im- 
mense weathercock, representing a boat with what I supposed to be 
a saint standing up in it, with gilt enough left upon the metal of 
which it was formed to flash dully at intervals as the rolling of the 
vessel strung the sunlight off and on to it. As she lifted to the 
floating heave of the sea she showed a bottom of ugly green sheathing 
rich with marine growths, dark patches of barnacles, sea-moss, and 
long tradings of weed rising vividly green from the sparkle of the 
brine. 

“ What a very horrid looking boat,” observed Miss Jennings. 

As the girl said this I saw the fellow at the stranger’s wheel re- 
volve it with frantic gestures, as though some deadly danger had been 
descried close aboard; the brig came heavily and sluggishly round 
right athwart our course, showing no colors, and dipping her chan- 
nels to the run of the folds with the weary motion of a water-logged 
vessel, and so lay all aback. Finn looked on, scarcely understanding 
the manoeuvre, then bawled out, “ Hard down ! Hard down ! Chuck 
her right up in the wind ! Why, bless my body and soul, what are 
the fools aiming at?” 


120 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY 


The yacht, nimbly answering her helm, came to a stand, her 
square canvas to the mast, her fore and aft sails fluttering. 

“Hail her, Finn I” cried Wilfrid, with excitement. 

“ No need, sir ; they’re coming aboard,” answered the captain ; 
and sure enough there were the men, the only two besides the man 
at the helm who were visible, working like madmen to lower away 
their jolly-boat. In their red-hot haste they let her drop with a 
run, and the fat fabric smote the water so heavily that I looked to 
see her floating in staves alongside. Then down one fall, with the 
agility of a monkey, dropped the man in the red nightcap into her 
and unhooked the blocks, jumping about like a madman. His com- 
panion swung himself down by the other fall, and in a trice both 
men, sitting so far in the head of the boat as to cock her stern high 
up while her nose was nearly under, were pulling for the yacht as 
though the devil himself were in pursuit of them. 

“What do they want — the Bride?"" exclaimed Wilfrid, breaking 
into a huge roar of laughter, with a slap of his knee. He had been 
eying the approach of the boat with a sort of high, lifting stare — 
head thrown back, nostrils round and quivering, like an impatient 
horse’s. 

“The desire of the moth for the star!” said I to Miss Jennings. 
“ But the simile won’t hold ; yonder red nightcap spoils the fancy 
of the moth.” 

“Shall we receive them aboard, sir?” exclaimed Captain Finn. 

“ Certainly,” responded Wilfred, with another short shout of 
laughter. 

“Unship that there gangway,” sung out Finn; “the steps over 
the side, one of ye.” 

The two strange creatures pulled with amazing contortions. Small 
wonder that the heap of child-like disposition that pretty well made 
up the substance of Wilfrid’s manhood should have been stirred into 
extravagant merriment by the wild movements of the two fellows’ 
bodies, the windmill-like flourishings of their oars, the flopping and 
flapping of the red cap, the incessant straining and twisting of the 
chocolate faces over the shoulder to see how they were heading, the 
shrill exclamations that sounded from the instant the fellows were 
within ear-shot, and that never ceased until they had floundered and 
splashed alongside. 

I never beheld two more hideous men. Their skins w'ere be- 
grimed w'ith dirt, and their color came near to the complexion of the 
negro with sun and weather and neglect of soap; the hair of the 


AN ocean TEaOtEOY. 


121 


seaman that wore the dirty red nightcap fell in snake-like coils upon 
his back and shoulders, black as tar and shining as grease. He wore 
thick gold hoops in his ears, and a faded blue sash round his waist; 
his feet were naked, and for the like of them it would be necessary 
to hunt the forests of Brazil. The other man wore a slouched felt 
hat, a pair of gray trousers jammed into half Wellington boots, a 
jacket confined by a button at the neck, the sleeves thrown over his 
back, while his dark arms, naked to the elbows, were hairy as a ba- 
boon’s, with a glimpse to be caught of a most intricate net-work of 
gunpowder and Indian -ink devices covering the flesh to the very 
finger-nails. This creature had a very heavy mustache, backed by 
a pair of fierce whiskers, with flashing though bloodshot eyes, like a 
blot of ink upon a slice of orange-peel. 

We were in a group at the gangway when they came sputtering 
alongside, flinging down their oars and walloping about in the wild- 
est conceivable scramble as they made fast the painter and clawed 
their way up, and the instant they were on our deck they both let 
fly at us in a torrent of words, not attempting to distinguish among 
us, but both of them addressing first one and then another, all with 
such mad impetuosity of speech, such smiting of their bosoms, such 
snapping of their fingers, and convulsive brandishing of their fists, 
that the irrecognizable tongue in which they delivered themselves 
was rendered the most hopelessly confounding language that ever 
bewildered the ear. It was quite impossible to gather what they 
desired to state. First they would point to our ensign, then to their 
brig, then to the long gun upon our forecastle, meanwhile talking 
with indescribable rapidity. Finn tried to check them ; he bawled, 
“Stop! stop! You no speakee English?” but they only started and 
let drive again the moment he ended his question. 

“ There’s no good in all this,” said Wilfrid ; “ we must find out what 
they want. What the deuce is their language, Charles, d’ye know?” 

“ A sort of Portuguese, I imagine,” said I ; “ but a mighty cor- 
rupt specimen of that tongue, I should think.” 

“ I will try them in French,” said he ; and approaching the fellow 
in the red nightcap he bawled in French, with an excellent accent, 
“ What is wrong with your ship ? What can we do for you ?” 

Both men shook their heads and broke out together afresh. It 
was amazing that they should go on jabbering as though we per- 
fectly understood them, when one glance at our faces should have 
assured them that they might as well have addressed the deck on 
which they stood. 


122 


an ocean tragedy. 


“ Try’ em in Latin, Wilf,” cried I. 

lie addressed a few words to them in that tongue, but his English 
accent extinguished the hint or two they might have found in the 
words he employed had he pronounced them in South European fash- 
ion, and after glaring at him a moment with a deaf face, the red-capped 
man stormed forth again in a passion of speech, accompanied by the 
most incredible gesticulations, pointing to his brig, to our flag, to the 
cannon as before, winding up in the delirium of his emotion by fling- 
ing his cap down on deck and tearing a handful of hair out of his head. 

Our crew were all on deck, and had come shouldering one another 
aft as fast as they dared, where they stood looking on, a grinning, 
hearkening, bewhiskered huddle of faces. I thought it just possible 
that one of them might understand the lingo of our grimy and aston- 
ishing visitors, and suggested as much to Captain Finn. He called, 
“Do any one of you men follow what these chaps are a-saying?” 

A fellow responded, “It’s Portugee, sir. I can swear to that, 
though I can’t talk in it.” 

“ Try them in Italian, Laura,” said Wilfrid. 

She colored, and in a very pretty accent, that floated to the air 
like the soft sounds of a flute after the hoarse, hideous, and howling 
gibberish of the two Dagos, as I judged them, she asked if they were 
Portuguese. The eyes of the fellow in the slouched hat flashed to 
a great grin that disclosed a very cavern of a mouth under his mus- 
tache widening to his whiskers, and he nodded violently. She asked 
again in Italian what they required, but this fell dead — they did 
not understand her ; but, possibly imagining that she could compre- 
hend them, they both addressed her at once, raising a most irritating 
clattering with their tongues. 

“ It looks to me,” said Finn, “ as if it was a case o’ mutiny. 
Don’t see what else can sinnify their constant pointing to that there 
gun and our flag and then their brig.” 

I sent a look at the vessel as he spoke, and took notice now of a 
number of heads along the line of the main-deck rail, watching us 
in a sort of ducking way, by which I mean to convey a kind of com- 
ing and going of those dusky knobs which suggested a very furtive 
and askant lookout. She was not above a quarter of a mile off. 
The wheel showed plain, and the man at it kept his face upon us 
continuously, while his posture, Liliputianized as he was, betrayed 
Y extraordinary impatience and anxiety. The craft lay aback, the light 
wind hollowing her sails inboard, and her ugly besmeared hull roll- 
ing in a manner that I suppose was rendered nauseous to the eye by 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


123 


her color, her form, her frowzy, ill-cut canvas, and her sheathing of 
sickly hue, foul with slimy weed and squalid attire of repulsive sea- 
growth upon the long and tender lifting and falling of the sparkling 
blue. There were some white letters under her counter, but, though 
I took a swift peep at them through Finn’s telescope, the shadow 
there and the long slant of the name towards the stern-post rendered 
the words indecipherable. The glass showed such heads along the 
rail as I could fix to be strictly in keeping with the filth and neglect 
yon saw in the brig and with the appearance of the two men aboard 
of the schooner. Most of them might have passed for negroes. 
There were indications of extreme agitation among them, visible in 
a sort of fretful flitting, a constant looking up and around and abaft 
in the direction of the man at the wheel. 

I thought I would try my hand with the red-capped worthy, and 
striding up to him, I sung out, “ Capitano ?” 

He nodded, striking himself, and then, pointing to his companion, 
spoke some word, but I did not understand him. By this time the 
crew had come, shoving one another a little farther aft, so that we 
now made a fair crowd all about the gangway. Every man’s atten- 
tion was fixed upon the two Portuguese. It was so odd an expe- 
rience that it created a sort of license for the crew ; and Finn was 
satisfied to look on while first one and then another of our men ad- 
dressed the two fellows, striving to coax some meaning out of them 
by addressing them in “pigeon” and other forms of English, accord- 
ing to that odd superstition current among seamen that our language 
is most intelligible to foreigners when spoken in a manner the least 
intelligible to ourselves. 

We of the quarter-deck were beginning to grow weary of all this. 
The hope of being able to pick up news of the Shark had gone out 
of Wilfrid’s mind long ago ; the humor, moreover, of the two creat- 
ures’ appearance and apparel was now stale to him, and with folded 
arms he stood apart watching their gesticulations and listening to 
their jargon — in which it seemed to me they were telling the same 
story over and over and over again — with tired air and gloomy brow. 
I drew Finn apart. 

“ What is the matter with them, think you ?” 

“ I dorn’t doubt it’s a mutiny, sir.” 

“ It looks like it, certainly ; but how can we help them ?” 

“We can’t help them, sir. The best thing we can do, I think, is 
to order ’em off. You can see, Mr. Monson, his honor’s growing 
sick of the noise.” 


124 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


I started suddenly. 

“Why, Finn, look!” I cried; “seel they have trimmed sail on 
the brig and she is under way 1” 

It was indeed as I had said. Unobserved by us, the people of 
the vessel had squared the main-yards and flattened in the head- 
sheets, and there she was away to windward, pushing slowly through 
it with a brassy wrinkling of water at her stem, her crew running 
about her as active as ants, while I noticed in the difference of cos- 
tume that a new man had replaced the fellow who was at the wheel. 

“ Mind,” I shouted, “ or, by Jupiter, they’ll run away with the ship 
and leave this brace of beauties on our hands I” 

A single glance enabled Finn to see how it was. In a breath he 
sprang upon the red-capped man, caught him by the collar, twisted 
his head around in the direction of the brig, while he yelled in his 
ear, “Lookee! looked your ship go! your ship go! Jurnpee, 
jumpee, or you loosee ship !” It was not likely that the grimy 
creature would have met with a ghost of a hint of the truth in the 
“lookees” and “ jumpees” of friend Finn, but his nose having been 
slewed in the right direction, he instantly saw for himself. He 
broke out in a long, ringing howl, which I took to be some tremen- 
dous sea-curse in the Portuguese language ; and calling his compan- 
ion’s attention to the brig by striking him with his clinched flst be- 
tween the shoulders, and then indicating the vessel with both arms 
out-stretched in a melodramatic posture that made one think of 
Masaniello, he uttered another wild roar that was no doubt a further 
example of Portuguese bad language, and went in a sprawl to the 
gangway, followed by his comrade. In a trice they were over the 
side and in the boat, pulling furiously in the direction of the brig. 

“ Better trim sail. Captain Finn, so as to lie up for that vessel,” 
exclaimed Wilfrid. “We must see those men aboard and the little 
drama played out, though ’tis vexatiously delaying.” 

It was now blowing a very light air of wind, yet there was weight 
enough in it to hold steady the canvas of the Portuguese brig even 
to the lifting of her foresail, lumpish as those cloths were made by 
the boom that spread the clews ; and one saw by the wake of her 
that she was stirring through it at a pace to render the pursuit of 
the boat long and possibly hopeless, if the crew refused to back their 
yards for the two fellows. The boat was a fat, tub-like fabric, ap- 
parently heavy for her size, and the rowers pulled with such alternate 
heat and passion that, though they made the water buzz and foam 
about the bows, their motion was as erratic — first to right, then to 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


125 


left, then a spasmodic heave round, as though they meant to return 
to us — as the course of a fly climbing a pane of glass. The whole 
picture was thrown out strong and clear by the background of spar- 
kling azure water melting into a sort of trembling faintness off the 
horizon to above the height of the brig’s masts against the sky, which 
from there ran up in a tint of deepening blue till it whitened out 
into glory round about the sun. The boat rose and fell upon the 
long ocean heave, splashed wildly forward by the two rowers, who 
again and again would turn their mahogany-colored faces over their 
shoulders to yell to the withdrawing vessel. The brig’s crew stood 
in a crowd aft watching, most of them, as the glass disclosed, in a 
loaflng, lounging posture, their bare arms folded or their hands sunk 
in their breeches-pockets, while one or another occasionally pointed, 
at us or the boat, with a theatrical attitude of leaning back as he did 
so that made one fancy one could hear the laughter or the curses 
which attended these gestures. On high rustily glittered the amaz- 
ing old weathercock or dog-vane of the saint in his boat, from which 
would leap with pendulum regularity a dull flame sunward, timing a 
like kind of fire, which flashed wet from the dirty yellow and sickly 
green of the hull, as her side rolled streaming to the noontide blaze. 

“ I say, Wilfrid,” cried I, “ it doesn’t seem as if those chaps meant 
to let that boat approach them.” 

“ What’s to be done ?” he exclaimed. 

I looked at Finn. “If they don’t pick those two fellows up,” 
said I, “ we shall have to do so, that’s cocksure. But they are a 
kind of beauties whose room is better than their company, I think, as 
the crew would find out when we approached the equinoctial waters.” 

“ Ay, sir,” cried Finn. “ It would never do to have the likes o’ 
them aboard, your honor,” addressing Sir Wilfrid. “No, no, the 
brig must pick ’em up. Dang their cruel hearts ! I never seed a 
scurvier trick played at sea in all my days.” 

“ But what’s to be done ?” cried Wilfrid, impatiently and irritably. 
“ Could one of our boats overhaul the brig and put the two fellow's 
aboard her ?” 

Finn shook his head. 

/'’’’^ee here, Wilf,” said I, “ suppose we let slip a blank shot at her 
out of that eighteen-pounder yonder? The dirty herd of scow- 
bankers may take us to be a man-of-war. And another idea on top 
of this !” cried I, bursting into a laugh. “ Is there anything black 
aboard that we can fly at the mast-head ? It should prove a warrant 
of our honesty that must puzzle them gloriously.” 


126 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“Would a black shawl do, Mr. Monson?” said Miss Jennings. 

“ The very thing,” said I, “ if it’s big enough.” 

She immediately went below. 

“ I think a blank shot’s a first-class idea,” exclaimed Finn, “ but 
as to a black fiag — ” and he cocked his eye dubiously at the mast- 
head, while his face visibly lengthened. 

“ Why a black flag, CJiarles?” cried Wilfrid. 

“ Why, my dear Wilf — the pirate’s bunting, you know. The rogues 
may take us for a picaroon — no telling the persuasive influence of a 
black banner upon the nerves of such gentry.” 

“ Noble ! noble !” shouted Wilfrid, slapping his leg ; “ frighten 
them, Finn, frighten them. Why, man, they can’t be all fools, 
and some of them at least will very well know that that ensign up 
there” — pointing to the commercial flag at our peak — “is not her 
Britannic Majesty’s red cross. But a black flag — oh yes, by all 
means, if we can but muster such a thing. And get that gun load- 
ed, will ye, Finn ? Get it done at once, I say.” 

The skipper walked hurriedly forward as Miss Laura arrived with 
a black cashmere or crape shawl — I do not recollect the material. 
We held it open between us. 

“The very thing,” I cried, and full of excitement — for here was 
something genuine in the way of an incident to break in upon the 
monotony of a sea trip — I bent the shawl on to the signal halyards 
that led from the maintop-mast head and sent it aloft in a little ball, 
ready to break when the gun should be fired. 

Meanwhile all was bustle forward. It is a question whether Jack 
does not love firing off a cannon even better than beating a drum. 
Miss Jennings walked right aft as far as she could go, holding her 
fingers in readiness for her ears, and saying to me as she passed that 
sudden noises frightened her. Wilfrid stood alongside of me, glancing 
with a boyish expression of excitement and expectation from the 
seamen congregated round the gun to the little black ball at the 
mast-head. The yacht was slowly overhauling the brig, but almost 
imperceptibly. The boat maintained an equidistance between us, 
and was struggling, wabbling, and splashing fair in a line with our 
cut-water and the lee quarter of the Portuguese craft. The two 
rowers exhibited no signs of exhaustion, though I expected every 
minute to find one or both of them give up and disappear, dead beat- 
en, in the bottom of their tub. 

“All ready forward, sir !” shouted Finn ; “ will your honor give us 
a signal when to fire ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


127 


As he sung out the group of seamen hustled backward from the 
gun and thinned into meagre lines of spectators at a safe dis- 
tance. 

“ Fire !” bawled Wilfrid. 

There was a glance of flame past the bow port, a roar that tingled 
through the decks into one’s very marrow, and the sea turned blind 
with white smoke, iridescent as a cobweb, over the bows of the 
Bride. I tugged at the signal halyards, broke ray little ball, and the 
black shawl floated out fair from the mast-head, as sinister a piratic 
symbol as one could have desired, and not an atom the less malignant 
in signiflcance for wanting the old-fashioned embellishments of the 
cross-bones and skull. I saw the Jacks forward looking up at the 
sight with grinning wonderment. However, it was easy to see by 
their way of laughing, staring, and turning to one another, that they 
twigged the motive of that wild marine exhibition. I sprang to the 
peak signal halyards and hauled the ensign down, for the black flag 
combines but ill with the union-jack, and then went to the side to 
see what the brig was about. Either she did not understand our 
meaning, or was resolved not to take any hint from us. She held 
on doggedly without a touch of the braces or a shift of the helm by 
the length of a spoke, with her people watching us and the pursuing 
boat from over the tallrail, a cluster of sulphur-colored faces, as they 
looked at that distance, but harmonizing excellently well, I thought, 
with the dingy yellow of the canvas rising in ungainly spaces over 
their heads and the sickly hue of the brig’s hull with its shiny, pease- 
soup-like reflection in the water to the lift of the squalid fabric upon 
some polished brow of swell. 

“ Wilfrid,” cried I, “ they don’t mean to pick up their boat.” 

“ It looks like it,” said he. “ What’s to be done ? There’s some- 
thing confoundedly insulting in the rogue’s indifference to our gun 
and colors.” 

“ Better consult with Finn,” said I. 

He called to the skipper, who came to us from the forecastle. 

“ I say, Finn, what are we to do ? We don’t want those two filthy 
fellows aboard this yacht ; and yet, if that brig don’t pick them up, 
we can’t, of c6urse, let them remain adrift.” 

“Arm a boat’s crew,” said I ; “ you have weapons enough below. 
Take those two fellows out of yonder boat and compel the brig to 
receive them. I’ll take charge with pleasure if Finn’ll permit.” 

Finn, a slow, sober, steady old merchant seaman, did not seem to 
see this. The expression of worry made his long face comical with 


128 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


the puzzled twist at the corners of his mouth, which looked to be, in 
his countenance, where most men’s noses are situated. 

“ Or,” said I, observing him to hang in the wind, “ make them 
really believe that those are the colors we sail under” — pointing to 
the shawl — “by slapping a round-shot at them in sober earnest, 
leaving the missile to take its chance of missing or hitting.” 

“That’s it,” almost shrieked Wilfrid, in his excitement; “yes, 
that’ll save the botheration of boat lowering and arguefication and 
perhaps bloodshed, by George ! Run forward now, Finn, and let fly 
a round-shot at that ugly brute; hit her if you can, no matter where, 
that they may know we’re in earnest, and that they may believe if 
they don’t heave to we shall sink them. No remonstrance, Finn, for 
Heaven’s sake! Jump, my dear fellow. Dash it! man,” he cried, 
passionately, with a quite furious gesture in the direction of the brig, 
“ that’s not the object of our chase.” 

Finn, with an air of concern, but awed also by Wilfrid’s temper 
and insistence, hurried on to the forecastle. I watched them load 
the gun a second time, and burst into a laugh when I saw two fel- 
lows rise out of the fore-hatch, each of them hugging an eighteen- 
pound shot to his heart. 

“Only one ball at a time,” shouted Wilfrid, conceiving very likely 
that they meant to double-shot the gun. 

“Ay, ay, sir,” responded Finn. 

The crew backed away as before. The stout, whiskered seaman, 
with a face that made one think of a red apple snugged in a setting 
of horse-hair, who had previously fired the gun, and who was appar- 
ently the Bride's gunner, sighted the piece with a deliberateness that 
made me expect wonders. We all held our breath. I fixed my eye 
on the brig to observe, if possible, where the shot struck her. Then, 
crash ! Had the cannon been loaded to the muzzle the blast could 
not have been more deafening. The thunder of it swept with a 
thrill out and away fiercer than the tremble of the first shock 
through the deck, and was almost immediately followed by a loud 
and fearful yell from the forecastle. I thought the gun had burst. 

“Merciful powers! what has happened?” cried Wilfrid. 

Captain Finn came bowling aft fast as his legs would travel. 

“ What is it? what is it?” my cousin and I roared out in one voice. 

“The shot’s struck the boat, your honors, and sunk her!'' bellow- 
ed Finn. 

I looked, and, sure enough, where the boat had been there was 
nothing to be seen but the violet slope of the swell softly drawing 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


129 


out of the cloud of powder-smoke that was settling in lengthening, 
glistening folds towards the brig ! I thought I observed something 
dark, however, and snatching up Finn’s telescope from the skylight 
top, I levelled it, and made out the head of the man with the red 
nightcap holding by an oar or bit of wreckage. I shouted out that 
one of the men was alive in the water. The dismay was universal, 
but there was no disorder, no commotion. By waiting a little, the 
BridCy even as she was heading, would have floated to the spot 
where that melancholy red beacon was bobbing ; but the delay this 
would have involved was not to be dreamed of. With a smartness 
that excited my admiration, rnan-of-war’s-man as I had been in my 
time, our largest boat, a six-oared fabric, with sour old Crimp in the 
stern-sheets, was lowered and pulled away with splendid precision 
in the direction of the red nightcap. In a few minutes they had 
got the fellow inboard; they then hung upon their oars, looking 
round and round ; but the other unfortunate creature, he of the 
slouched hat and black and flashing eyes, had found a sailor’s grave. 
I sought with the glass over a broad fleld of water, but could see 
nothing. There was not a vestige left of the boat save what the 
red-capped chap had clung to. 

“ One of them killed ! Heaven have mercy upon us !” groaned Wil- 
frid in ray ear, and his appearance was full of dreadful consternation. 

Meanwhile the brig ahead was holding steadily on, her crowd of 
people aft gazing at us as before. I took a view of them ; they all 
held a sort of gaping posture ; there were no dramatic gesticulations, 
no eager and derisive turning to one another, no pointing arms and 
backward leaning attitudes. They had as thunder-struck an air as 
can be imagined in a mob of men. What they supposed us to be 
now^ after our extermination of the boat and one of the two fellows 
who had sought our assistance, it was impossible to conjecture. 

Our boat, that had sped away from us about four times faster 
than we were moving through the water, hung with lifted oars over 
the spot where our cannon-ball had taken effect, until the Bride had 
slowly surged to within hail ; then up stood sour Crimp. 

“ What are we to do ?” 

“ Have you got both men ?” bawled Finn, who perfectly well 
knew that they hadn’t. 

“ No ; there was but one to get, and here he is,” and Crimp point- 
ed to the bottom of the boat. 

“ Put him aboard his ship,” cried Finn. “ If they refuse to receive 
}iim, find out if there’s e’er a one of ’em that can speak English, and 


130 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


then tell them that if they don’t take him we shall arm our men 
and compel ’em to it ; and if that don’t do, we’ll keep on firing 
into ’em till they follow the road that’s been took by their jolly-boat.” 

His long face was purple with temper and the effort of shouting, 
and he turned it upon Wilfrid, who nodded a fierce, excited approval, 
while I cried, “ That’s it, that’s it ; they must take him !” 

Crimp held up his hand in token of having heard the captain, 
then seated himself ; the oars fell and flashed as they rose wet to 
the sun, every gold-bright blade in a line, and the foam went spin- 
ning away from the bows of the little craft in snow to the magnifi- 
cent disciplined sweep of those British muscles. In a jiffy she was 
on the brig’s quarter, with Crimp erect in her, gesticulating to the 
crowd who overhung the rail. I kept the telescope bearing on them, 
and it seemed to me that the whole huddle of them jabbered to 
Crimp all together, an indistinguishable hubbub, to judge from the 
extraordinary contortions into which every individual figure flung 
itself, some of them going to the length of spinning round in their 
frenzy, while others leaped upon the rail and addressed the boat’s 
crew with uplifted arms, as though they called all sorts of maledic- 
tions down upon our men. This went on for a few minutes ; then 
I saw the bow-oar fork out his boat-hook and drag the boat to the 
main channels, into which, all very expeditiously, two or three brawny 
pairs of arms lifted the red-capped man. Then four of our fellows 
sprang into the chains, handed the little creature over the rail, 
and let him drop inboard. They then re-entered their boat, and fell 
astern of the brig by a few fathoms, holding their station there by 
a soft plying of oars. Crimp’s notion probably being, as ours was, 
indeed, that the Portuguese crew would presently send our friend 
the red-cap to follow his mate. 

We waited, watching intently. On a sudden I spied the red-cap 
in the heart of the mob of men that had clustered again near the 
wheel. His gesticulations were full of remonstrance; his people 
writhed round about him in the throes of a Portuguese argument, 
but it seemed to me, as I followed their gestures and their way of 
turning their faces towards us, that their talk was all about our 
schooner — as though, indeed, their mutinous passions had been 
diverted by our cannon-shot in a direction that boded no particular 
evil to the red-capped man. 

“ They’ll not hurt the creature, I believe,” said I. 

“ Call the men aboard, Finn,” exclaimed Wilfrid, “ and get the 
Bride to her course,” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


isri 


CHAPTER XII. 

A SECOND WARNING. 

I HAULED down the shawl from the mast-head, carefully unbent, 
folded, and gave it to Miss Jennings, who stood with Wilfrid watch- 
ing the Portuguese brig. We had hoisted in our boat, and the men 
were busy about the decks coiling up after having trimmed sail. 

“ Once more heading a fair course for the Shark” said I, with a 
glance at the compass. “ This has been a neat morning’s work. A 
few incidents of the kind should make out a lively voyage.” 

“ Oh, but it’s dreadful to think of that poor man having been 
drowned !” exclaimed Miss Jennings. “ I was watching the boat be- 
fore the gun was fired. In an instant she vanished. She might haye 
been a phantom. She melted out upon the water as a snow-flake 
would. I pressed my eyes, for I could not believe them at first.” 

“ Horrible !” exclaimed Wilfrid, in a hollow, melancholy voice ; 
“ what had that miserable creature done that we should take his life? 
Have we insensibly — insensibly — courted some curse of Heaven 
upon this yacht? Who was the villain that did it?” He wheeled 
round passionately. “Finn — Captain Finn, I say!” he shouted. 

The captain, who was giving directions to some men in the waist, 
came aft. 

“ Who was it that fired that shot, Finn ?” cried my cousin, in his 
headlong way, jerking his head as it were at Finn with the question, 
while his arms and legs twitched and twisted as though to an elec- 
tric current. 

“ A man named O’Connor, Sir Wilfrid,” responded Finn. 

“Did he do it expressly, think you?” 

“ I wouldn’t like to say that, your honor. The fellow’s a blunder- 
head. I inquired if there was e’er a man for’ard as could load and 
sight a cannon, and this chap stands up and says that he’d sarved 
for three years in a privateer, and was reckoned the deadest shot out 
of a crew of ninety men.” 

“ Call him aft,” said Wilfrid. “ If he aimed at that boat inten- 
tionally it’s murder — call him aft 1” 

He took some impatient strides to and fro, with a face that worked 


132 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


like a ship in a sea-way with the conflict of emotions within him, 
while Finn, going a little way forward, sung out for O’Connor. 
Meanwhile we were rapidly widening the distance between us and 
the brig. I protest it was with an honest feeling of relief that I 
watched her sliding into a toylike shape, with promise of nothing 
showing presently but some radiant film of her top-mast canvas in 
the silver azure that streaked by a hand’s-breadtb, as it looked, the 
whole girdle of the horizon ; for one was never to know but that 
her people might send the red-capped man adrift for us to pick up, 
or worry us in some other way. 

Finn arrived, followed by the Irishman who had discharged the 
gun. His immense black whiskers stood out thick, straight, inflexi- 
ble as the bristles of a chimney-sweep’s brush, contrasting very ex- 
traordinarily with the bright apple-red of his cheek and the blue, 
Hibernian, seawardly eye that glimmered under a dense black thatch 
of brow. He stood bolt- upright, soldier fashion, with his arms 
straight up and down by his sides like pump-handles, and fixed an 
unwinking stare upon whoever addressed him. 

“You fired that gun, Captain Finn says,” exclaimed Wilfrid. 

“Oi did, your honor.” 

“ What made you take aim at the boat ?” 

“Your honor, by the holy eleven, I took aim at the brig. There’s 
something wrong with the pace.” 

“ Wrong with the piece. What d’ye mean?” 

“ It was cast with a kink, sorr ; it dhroops amidships, and shoots 
as Misther Crimp’s larboard oye peeps, your honor, though, loike his 
oye, it manes well.” 

“ Nonsense,” I cried, “you must have covered the boat to hit it.” 

“ By all that’s sacred, then,” cried the man, “ I had the natest ob- 
servation of the brig’s maintop-masht as ever oye could bring the 
muzzle of a pace to soight. The gun was cast with a kink, sorr.” 

■“ My belief is that you’re utterly ignorant of guns,” cried Wilfrid. 
“ The concussion was fierce enough to shake the yacht to pieces.” 

“ ’Twas your honor’s design to froighten ^em.” 

“ But not to murder them, you dolt,” shouted Wilfrid. “ D’ye 
know I could have you hanged for this ?” 

“ It was but a hay then Portuguay, sorr,” answered the fellow, pre- 
serving his ramrod-like posture and unwinking stare. 

“ Tell him to go forward, Finn ; tell him to go forward,” cried 
Wilfrid, “ and see that he never has any more to do with that gun 
on any account whatever, d’ye understand ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


133 


The seaman knuckled his forehead and wlieeled round, but iiie- 
thought I could just catch a glimpse past his whisker of a sudden 
protrusion of the cheek as though he was signalling with his tongue 
to a brother-jack who was flemish-coiling a rope not very far from 
where he was standing. 

The luncheon-bell rang and we went below. At table we could 
talk of nothing but the unhappy Portuguese whom our round-shot 
had sent to the bottom. Muffin’s face of respectful horror was a 
feature of the time which I recall more vividly than even the disas- 
ter itself. This man, though he was in attendance on Wilfrid as a 
valet, regularly stood behind his master’s chair at meals. It was 
Wilfrid’s whim to have him at hand. He did not offer to wait un- 
less it was to procure anything my cousin might require when the 
stewards were busy with Miss Jennings and myself, or one or both 
of them absent. His air of deferential consternation was exceed- 
ingly fine as he listened to our talk about the annihilated boat and 
the foundered foreigner, “ Who,” said I, with a glance at his yellow 
visage, the shocked expression of which he tried to smother by twist- 
ing his lips into a sort of shape that might pass as a faint obsequi- 
ous simper, and by keeping his eyelids lowered, “ let us trust was cut 
in halves, for then his extinction would be painless ; for, after all, 
drowning, though it is reckoned an agreeable death, after conscious- 
ness has fled, is mortal agony, I take it, while the sensation of suffo- 
cation remains.” 

Muffin’s left leg fell away with an exceedingly nervous crooking 
of it in the trouser, and he turned up his eyes an instant to the 
upper-deck with so sickly a roll that despite myself I burst into a 
laugh, though I swiftly recovered myself. 

“ It is strange, Charles,” exclaimed my cousin, in a raven-like note, 
“ that a ghastly incident of this kind should sit so lightly on your 
mind, considering that you have quitted the sea for years and have 
led a far more effeminate life ashore than I, who have been rough- 
ing it on the ocean when very likely you were lounging with a 
bored face in an opera-stall or dozing over a cigar in some capacious 
club arm-chair. Had you been chasing slavers or pitching cannon- 
shot into African villages down to the present moment, I could 
almost understand your indifference to a business that’s going to 
haunt me for the rest of my days.” 

“ Nonsense !” I exclaimed ; “ it was a bad job, I admit, but a pure 
accident, not more tragical than had the boat capsized and drowned 
the man. There would be nothing in a twenty -fold uglier mis- 


134 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


hap to haunt you. But I’ll tell you what, though,” I continued, 
talking on to avert the sentimental argument which I saw strong in 
Wilfrid’s face, “the incident of this morning points a very useful 
moral.” 

“ What moral ?” he demanded. 

“ Why, that we must not be in too great a hurry to speak every 
sail we sight.” 

“Finn knows my wishes; we must hear all we can about the 
Shark'' cried Wilfrid, warmly. 

“The very vessel that we neglect to speak,” exclaimed Miss Jen- 
nings, softly — she had spoken but little, and it was easy to see 
through the transparency of her unaffected manner that the tragic 
affair of the morning had made a very deep impression on her — 
“ might prove the one ship of all we pass that could most usefully 
direct us.” 

“Two to one!” said I, giving her a bow and smiling to the look 
of coy reproach in her charming eyes. “Of course. Miss Jennings, 
I have no more to say. At least,” I added, turning to Wilfrid, “ on 
the head of speaking passing ships, though the moral I find in this 
forenoon trouble is not exhausted.” 

“ Well,” said he, a little imperiously, leaning towards me on one 
elbow, with his nails at his lips and the spirit of restlessness quick 
as the blood in his veins in every lineament. 

“ Well,” said I, echoing him, “ my suggestion is that your long- 
tom’s murderous mission should be peremptorily cut short by your 
ordering Finn to strike the noisy old barker at once down into the 
hold, where he’ll be a deuced deal more useful as ballast than as a 
forecastle toy for the illustration of Irish humor.” 

“Nol” shouted Wilfrid, fetching the table a whack with his fist ; 
“so say no more about it, Charles.,- Strange that you, who should 
possess the subtlest and strongest of any kind of human sympathy 
for and with me — I mean the sympathy of blood — should so abso- 
lutely fail to appreciate my determination and to accept my purpose 1 
That girl there,” pointing with his long arm to Miss Laura, “can 
read my heart, and of her sweetness justify and approve all she 
finds there. But you, my dear Charles” — he softened his voice, 
though he continued speaking with warmth, nevertheless — “yow, 
my own first cousin, you to whom my honor should be hardly less 
dear than your own — you would have me abandon this pursuit — 
forego every detail of my carefully prepared programme — blink 
with a cynical laziness at my own and my infant’s degradation, and 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


135 


turn to the law — to the law, forsooth ! — for the appeasement or ex- 
tinction of every just yearning and of every consuming desire of 

my manhood. No, by G !” he roared, “ Fate may be against me, 

but even her iron hand can be forced by a heart goaded as mine has 
been and is.” 

He rose from the table, and without another word went to his cabin. 

We had been for some time alone — I mean that Muffin and the 
stewards had left us. When my cousin was gone I looked at Miss 
Jennings. 

“ Forgive me, Mr. Monson,” she exclaimed, with a little blush, and 
speaking with an enchanting diflSdence, “ but I fear — indeed I am 
sure — that any, even the lightest, suggestion that runs counter to 
Wilfrid’s wishes irritates him. And,” she added, almost in a whis- 
per, “ I think it is dangerous to irritate him.” 

“ I have no wish to irritate him, believe me. Miss Jennings,” said I. 
*‘I desire to be of some practical help, and my recommendations have 
no other motive. But I give you my word if this sort of thing goes 
on I shall grow selfish, nay, alarmed if you like. I certainly never 
anticipated these melodramatic displays, these tragic rebukes, when I 
accepted his offer of the voyage. Pray consider. If Wilf, poor fel- 
low, should grow worse, if his actions should result in exhibiting him 
as irresponsible, what’s to be done? Heaven forbid that I should say 
a word to alarm you.” She shook her head with a smile. I was a 
little abashed, but proceeded nevertheless : “ We are not upon dry 
land here. The ocean is as full of the unexpected as it is of fish. 
Finn is a plain, steady man, with brains enough, but then he is not in 
command in the sense that a captain is in command when we speak 
of a ship whose skipper is lord paramount. He will obey as Wilfrid 
orders ; and I say, Miss Jennings, with all submission to your engag- 
ing, to your beautiful desires as a sister, that if Wilfrid’s humor is 
going to gain on him at the rate at which I seem to find it growing, 
it will be my business, as I am certain it will be my duty, for every- 
body’s sake as well for yours and his own, so to contrive this unpar- 
alleled pursuit as tp end it swiftly.” 

She was silent — a little awed, I think, by my emphatic manner, 
perhaps by a certain note of sternness, for I had been irritated, be- 
sides being nervous ; and then, again, my distaste for the trip work- 
ed very strongly in me while I was talking to her. 

We were a somewhat gloomy ship for the rest of the day. I no- 
ticed that the seamen wore tolerably grave faces at their several jobs, 
and it was easy to gather that, now they had had time to digest the 


136 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


incident of the morning, it was as little to their taste as it was to 
ours aft. Indeed, it was impossible to tell wto kind of omen they 
might manufacture out of so tragic an affairy Sailors were very much 
more superstitious in those days than they are now ; the steam fiend 
has wonderfully cleared the atmosphere of the forecastle, and the sea- 
goblin has long since made his final dive from the top-gallant rail to 
keep company with the mermaid in her secret bower of coral in a 
realm fathoms deep beneath the ocean’s ooze. /O’Connor tried very 
hard to look as if he felt that on the whole he almost deserved to be 
hanged for his blundersome extermination of the Portugee heathen ; 
at least this seemed his air, when, as he sat stitching on a sail in the 
waist, he suspected a quarter-deck gaze to be directed at him. But it 
is hard for a man with merry blue eyes, and cheeks veritably grinning 
with ruddiness in the embrace of a huge, hearty pair of carefully doc- 
tored whiskers, to look contrite. The Irishman did his best, but I 
laughed to see how the instant he forgot his part nature jovially broke 
out in him again. 

Crimp had charge that afternoon, and when I arrived on deck with 
a cigar in my mouth, leaving Miss Jennings and her maid hanging ^ 
together over a hat whose feather in some way or other had gone 
wrong, I asked the mate what was his opinion of the accident of the 
morning. 

“Ain’t got any opinion about it at all,” he answered. 

“ It was an accident, let us believe,” said I. 

“Pure hignorance, more like,” he answered. “That there O’Con- 
nor’s regularly ate up with pride. He’s all bounce. Says he’s de- 
scended from kings, and if he had his rights he’d be at the head o’ 
Ulster or some such place as that ’stead of an able seaman. He know 
anything ’bout firing off cannons!” making a horrible face and going 
to the side to spit. 

“Did they understand what you said aboard the brig when you 
talked to them from the boat?” 

“ Ne’er a word.” 

“ Was the red-capped man hurt ?” 

“ Dazed. Eyes pretty nigh out on’s cheeks. He was too full o’ 
salt-water to curse, I allow, so when we hauled him into the boat he 
fell on his knees and prayed. A bloomin’ poor job ; a measly mean 
business! Knocking of a boat to pieces an’ drownding of a man. 
What’s the good o’ that there gun ? Only fit to kick up a plaguy 
shindy. Next time it may bust, and then, stand by ! for I once see 
an explosion.” 


AN ocean tragedy. 




“Is there anything wrong with the piece, as O’Connor suggests?” 
said I, much enjoying the old chap’s sourness, which I may say was 
not a little in harmony with my mood that afternoon. 

“ Couldn’t tell if ye offered me all ye was worth. My business 
ain’t guns. I shipped to do my bit and my bit I’ll do, but the line’s 
chalked a mighty long way this side o’ hordnance.” 

I walked on to the forecastle to inspect the gun for myself. O’Con- 
nor watched me with the whole round of his face, broad and purple 
as the rising moon. The gun was of an elderly fashion, but it looked 
a very substantial weapon, with a murderous grin in the gape of it, 
and a long slim throat that warranted a venomous delivery. The 
kit>k the Irishman spoke of was altogether in his eye. 

returned to the quarter-deck, relighted my cigar, stowed myself 
comfortably away in the chair I had at an earlier hour procured for 
Miss Jennings, and pulling from my pocket a little handy edition of 
one of Walter Scott’s novels, was speedily transported leagues away 
from the ocean by the spells of that delightful wizard^.^^hus passed 
the afternoon. Miss Jennings remained below, and Wilfrid lay hid 
in his cabin. It was very pleasant weather. The sky was clear blue 
from line to line, with just a group of faint bronze-browed clouds 
of a dim cream at the horizon looming in the azure air far away 
down in the north-west. The wind was cool, though salt, a pleasant 
breeze from the east, with a trifle of northing in it, and very steadily 
the yacht travelled quietly over the plain of twinkling waters, cradled 
by a soft western heaving. She made no stir forward saving now 
and again a sound as of the pressure of a light foot upon tinderish 
brushwood ; every sail that would draw was packed on her, to her 
triangular lower studding-sail, the reflection of which waved in the 
tremulous blue like a sheet of quicksilver, fluctuating as it drained 
downward. 

Still it was dull work. I would often break away from Scott to 
send a glance at the skylight, where I could just get a peep at the 
ruddy glow of Miss Laura’s hair as she sat at the table, with her maid 
near her, and heartily wished she would join me. Crimp’s company 
was like pickles — a very little of it went a long way. Had etiquette 
permitted, I should have been glad to go among the men and yarn 
with them, for I could not doubt there was a store of amusing experi- 
ences lying behind some of the rugged hairy countenances scattered 
about the decks. Indeed, no summons ever greeted my ear more ^ 
cheerfully than the first dinner-bell ; for, whether one has an appe- 
tite or not, sitting down to a meal on board ship is something to do. 


13S 


an ocNan TEAGI!DY. 


Nothing that need make a part of this story happened that night. 
Wilfrid was reserved, but his behavior and the little he said were col- 
lected enough to make one wonder at the lengths he would occasion- 
ally go the other way. He brought a large diary from his cabin, and 
sat writing in it up to a short while before going to bed. I cannot 
imagine what he had to put down, unless, indeed, he were posting up 
the book from some old date. It found him occupation, however, 
and he was a good deal in labor, too, throughout, I thought, often 
biting the feather of his pen, casting his eyes up, plunging his fin- 
gers into his hair and frowning upon the page, and comporting him- 
self, in a word, as though he were composing an epic poem. I play- 
ed at beggar-rny-neighbor with Miss Jennings, showed her some tricks 
at cards, and she told my fortune. She said she could read my fut- 
ure by looking at my hand, and I feel the clasp of her fingers still, 
and smell the perfume of her hair, and behold the brightness of it, 
and see her poring upon my palm, talking low that W’^ilfrid should 
not be disturbed ; tracing the lines with a rosy finger-nail, with an 
occasional lift of her eyes to mine, the violet of them dark as hazel 
and brilliant in the oil-flames — it might have happened an hour ago, 
so keen is this particular memory. 

It was as peaceful an ocean night as any man could imagine of 
the weather up in the seas which our yacht was still stemming ; 
moonless, for the planet rose late now, but spacious and radiant with 
stars. There was the phantasm of a craft when I went on deck 
about a mile on the bow of us, in the spangled dusk looking like 
ice, so fine and delicate was the white of her canvas ; but no notice 
was taken of her. Finn trudged over to the gloom to leeward when 
I rose up through the hatch, possibly mistaking me for my cousin, 
and manifestly anxious to shirk the job of having anything to do 
with the stranger. I watched her pass — a mere wraith of a ship she 
looked, sliding her three stately spires, that seemed to melt upon the 
eye as you watched them under the red tremble and green diamond- 
like sparkling of the luminaries which looked down upon her. By 
the time she had faded out like a little puS of steam in the dumb 
shadow astern, my pipe was smoked out, and I went below and to 
bed, scarce having exchanged three words with Finn, and musing 
much on my fortune that Miss Laura had read in my hand — that 
my “ line of life ” was very long, that in middle-life I should meet 
a woman who would fascinate me, but that, nevertheless, I should 
die as I had lived — a bachelor. 

Next morning Wilfrid did not appear at the breakfast- table. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 



Muffin informed me that his master had passed a very bad night, 
had not closed his eyes, indeed, and for hour after hour had paced 
the cabin, sometimes going on deck. 

“Is he ill, do you think?” I inquired. 

“ Not exactly ill, sir,” he answered, in his sleekest manner, with 
the now familiar crook of one knee and his arms hanging straight 
up and down. 

“ Whai^then ?” I demanded, perceiving that the fellow had more 
to say, though his very humble and obsequious respectfulness would 
not suffer him to express much at a time. 

“ I fear, sir,” he exclaimed, looking down, “ that yesterday’s ’or- 
rid tragedy has preyed upon his nerves, which, as you are of course 
aweer, sir, is uncommonly delicate.” 

I thought this probable, and as the man was going to his master’s 
cabin with a cup of tea from the breakfast-table, I told him to give 
Sir Wilfrid my love, and to say that I should be glad to look in and 
sit with him. He returned to tell me my cousin thanked me, but 
that he would be leaving his berth presently, and would then join 
me in a pipe on deck. 

There was a fresh breeze blowing, and the yacht was plunging 
through it in a snow-storm, rising buoyant to the bow surge with a 
broad dazzle of racing water over the lee rail, and a smother of 
white roaring in a cataract from under her counter. There was 
wind in the misty shining of the sun and in the spaces of dim blue 
between the driving clouds. The ocean was gay with tints, flying 
cloud-shadows of slate, broad tracts of hurrying blue, rich and glo- 
riously fresh, with a ceaseless flashing of the heads of the dissolving 
billows, dashes of lustrous yellow to the touch of the sun, that you 
would see sweeping a rusty ball of copper through a mass of smoke- 
like vapor, and then leaping out, moist and rayless, into some speeding 
lagoon of clear heaven. The horizon throbbed to the walls of the 
dimness that circled the line all the way round, and my first glance 
was for a ship ; but all was bare ocean. From time to time the fel- 
low on the top-gallant yard ogled the slope over either bow in a way 
that made me imagine some sort of hope of the Shark's heaving into 
view had come to the sailors out of this rushing morning. I waited 
for Miss Jennings, thinking she would arrive on deck; but, after 
stumping to and fro for a half-hour or thereabouts, and passing 
the skylight, I saw her and Wilfrid in close conversation, standing 
almost directly beneath, he gesticulating with great energy, but 
speaking in a subdued voice, and she watching him with a troubled 


140 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


face. Passing the skylight again, a little later on, I caught sight of 
Wilfrid’s figure inarching up and down with irregular, broken strides, 
while the girl, leaning with her hand upon the back of a chair, con- 
tinued to gaze at him, with now and again a little movement of the 
arm which suggested that she was endeavoring to reassure or to 
reason with him. 

I got alongside of Finn, and fell into a yarn with him. One thing 
led to another, and Lady Monson’s name was mentioned. * 

“ Was she a pleasant lady ?” said I. 

“ Ay, to look at, your honor. Up to the hammer. A little too 
much of her, some folks might think ; but such eyes, sir ! such teeth ! 
and talk of figures r and here he delivered a low prolonged whistle 
of admiration. 

“ She was a tolerably amiable lady, I suppose ?” said I, carelessly. 

“ Well, sir, if you’ll forgive me for saying of it, that’s just what 
she wasn't^'' he replied. “ She was one of them parties as can be 
very glad and very sorry for themselves and for nobody else. She 
steered Sir Wilfrid as I might this here Bride. She needed but to 
set her course and the craft answered the shift of helm right away 
off. Ye never saw her, sir ?” 

Never.” 

“Well, she hadn’t somehow the appearance of what I tarm a 
marrying woman. She looked to be one of them splendid females 
as can’t abide husbands, for the reason that being made up of wani- 
ty, nothing satisfies ’em but the sort of admiration that sweethearts 
feels. I took notice once that, she being seated in a eheer, as it 
might be there,” said he, indicating a part of the deck with a nod 
of his long head, “ Sir Wilfrid draws up alongside of her to see if 
she were comfortable and if he could run on any errand for her. 
She scarcely gave him a look as she answered short as though his 
merely being near fretted her. But a minute arter up steps a gent 
from the cabin, the Honorable Mr. Lacy, and dawdles up to her, pull- 
ing at his bit of a whisker and showing of his teeth over a long puking 
of ‘ Haw! haws!’ and ‘ Yasses;’ and then see the change in her lady- 
ship ! Gor bless my heart and soul, your honor, ’twarn’t the same 
woman. She hadn’t smiles enough for this here honorable. Her 
voice was like curds and whey. She managed the color in her 
cheeks, too, somehow, and bloomed out upon the poor little dandy 
when a minute afore her face to her husband was as blank as a 
custard. No, Mr. Monson, sir, her ladyship wasn’t a marrying 
woman. She was one of them ladies meant by natur’ to sit in a gilt 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


141 


cheer in the heart of a crowd of young men, all a-bowing to and 
a-worshipping of her ; very different from her sister, sir. That little 
lady down below there I allow ’ll have the true makings of an English 
wife and an English mother in her, for all she’s an Australian.” 

“ I suppose, then, you were not very much surprised when you 
heard of Lady Monson’s elopement ?” 

“ No more surprised, your honor, than a man can be when a thing 
that he’s been expecting has happened. But she’s not going to 
stick to the colonel. If his honor don’t overhaul the Shark and 
separate ’em, she’ll be separating herself long afore the time it ud 
occupy the schooner to sail round the world. Lord love ’ee, sir, if 
I were to hear of her heeloping with some African king, atop of an 
elephant, it wouldn’t surprise me. When a woman like her allows 
a chap to cut her cable he must be a wiser man than e’er a prophet 
of them all that’s writ about who’s going to tell you where the hull ’ll 
strand or bring up.” 

As he delivered himself of these words Sir Wilfrid showed in the 
hatch, handing Miss Jennings up the ladder, and my companion 
started away on a lonely quarter-deck walk. The girl looked very 
grave and worried ; my cousin, gaunt and haggard, with a fire in his 
weak, protruding eyes that was like the light of fever or of famine. 
He grasped my hand and held it while he sent a look around. I 
spoke lightly of the fine breeze and the yacht’s pace and the good 
runs we should be making if this weather held, finding something 
in his instant’s assumption of a hearty demeanor, a sort of strained 
liveliness far more affecting than his melancholy, that was like a re- 
quest to me not to venture upon any sort of personal inquiries. He 
called to Finn to know the speed, then said : “ Charles, give Laura 
your arm, will you? There’s too much wind to sit. She looks a 
little pale, but a few turns will give roses to her cheeks. My head 
aches, and I must keep below out of this air till I am better.” 

Miss Jennings took my arm, for there would happen a frequent 
lee swing, with a rise of the bow and a long slanting rush to the 
whole weight of the cloths till you could have spooned up the white 
water over the side with your hand, that rendered walking difficult 
and fatiguing. Very soon I placed chairs under the weather-bul- 
warks, snugging her with rugs and shawls, and in the comparative 
calm of that shelter we were able to converse. 

“ Wilfrid looks very ill this morning,” said 1. 

“ He has had another warning,” she answered, 

“ The deuce he has. When ?” 


142 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Last night.” 

“ What sort of a warning is it this time ?” 

“ Precisely the same as the first one,” she replied. 

“ I am grieved, but not surprised,” said I. “ I very much fear he 
is going from bad to worse. I still hold with the views I expressed 
last evening. A time may, nay a time must come, when you your- 
self, Miss Jennings, ardent as is your sisterly desire, will look to me 
for some resolution that shall preserve us, and himself, too, from the 
schemes of a growing distemper.” She was silent. “ Did he tell 
you,” I continued, “ the nature of the warning ?” 

“ Yes,” she answered. 

“ In confidence ? If so, of course — ” 

“ No,” she interrupted ; “ he came from his cabin after breakfast, 
when you had gone on deck, and I saw at once that something was 
very wrong with him. I was determined to get at the truth, and 
questioned him persistently, and then he told me all.” 

exclaimed I, opening my eyes, for the word seemed to in- 
dicate some very large matter lying behind his confession. 

“ What he has seen,” she said, “ for two nights running has been 
a mysterious writing upon his cabin wall.” 

“Humph !” said L 

“Do you remember, Mr. Monson, that he told us of a dream in 
which he had seen a boat with a sort of sign-board in it, on which 
was inscribed the word ‘Monday’ in letters of flame? Well, he 
sees the same sort of fiery scrawl now in his cabin.” 

“ What is the nature of the message ?” 

“ He says that the words are ‘ Return to Baby !’ ” 

“ He has dreamed this,” said I, “ or it is some wretched trick of 
the sight or brains ; but I would rather believe it a dream.” 

“It is an illusion of some kind, no doubt,” she exclaimed, “but 
it is strange that it should occur, be the cause what it will, on two 
successive nights and much about the same time. No wonder the 
poor fellow is depressed this morning. It is not only that he fears 
this warning as signifying that something is seriously wrong with 
baby, and that it is a mysterious command to him to return to her 
at once; he dreads that it may occur again to-night and to-morrow 
night, continuously indeed, until it actually drives him mad by 
obliging him to make up his mind either to neglect his child or to 
abandon his pursuit of his wife.” 

“ The long and short of it is. Miss Jennings,” said I, “ that when 
it comes to one’s being thrown with a man whose mind is a misfit, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


143 


that’s apt to shift like an ill-stowed cargo to any breeze of wind that 
heels the craft over, one must ‘ stand by,’ as sailors say, for trouble- 
some half-hours and bewilderingly unexpected confrontments.” 

But there was no use in my telling her the wish was strong in 
my mind that if it was to be Wilfrid’s unhappy destiny to grow 
worse, then the sooner he acted in such a w'ay as to force all hands 
to see that it would be at his own as well as at our peril to leave 
him at large and to suffer him to preserve control over the move- 
ments of the yacht, and by consequence the lives and fortunes of 
those who sailed in her, the better ; for, I protest that even in the 
thick of my talk with the girl I never sent a glance at the white roll 
of spinning waters twisting and roaring away alongside without a 
sense of the absurdity of the whole business, the aimlessness of the 
pursuit, the futility of it as a project of revenge, its profound idle- 
ness as a scheme of recovering Lady Monson, guessing, as any one 
could, from my cousin’s talk and from what Laura Jennings had let 
fall, that if Wilfrid should succeed in regaining his wife he wouldn’t 
know what in the world to do with her I 


144 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

I INTERPRET THE WARNING. 

The strong wind blew throughout the day, and the yacht made a 
gallant run, floating buoyant in foam from one blue knoll to anoth- 
er, with nothing living outside our decks saving a gray gull that 
overhung the seething line torn up by the furrow of our keel. A 
bright lookout was kept aloft. Rarely did I send a glance that way 
but that I saw one or another of the men whose duty lay in over- 
hanging the top-gallant yard sweeping the windy, sallow sky, against 
which the ridged horizon was beating, with Wilfrid’s polished, lance- 
bright tube. 

In the flrst dog-watch, before we sat down to dinner, the breeze 
thinned and the ocean flattened out into a softly heaving surface, 
flowing in folds of tender blue to the dark orange of the west, where 
lines of the hectic of the crimsoning orb hung like mouldy stains of 
blood. All cloths were crowded on our little ship, and when, after 
dinner, I came on deck, I found her sliding through the evening shad- 
ow, large and pale, like a body of moon-tinctured mist that floats off 
some great mountain -top and sails stately on the indigo blue air, 
melting as it goes, as our canvas seemed to dissolve to the deepening 
of the dusk upon its full bosoms. A sailor was playing a concertina 
forward, and a man was singing to it. Here and there upon the 
forecastle was a dim grouping of outlines, with a scarlet tipping of 
the darkness by above half a score of well-sucked tobacco-pipes, mak- 
ing one think of a constellation of flre-flies, or of a cluster of riding 
lights. 

I had asked Miss Jennings to join me on deck, but she declined 
on the plea — which two or three sneezes emphasized in the most 
reassuring way — that she felt chilly, and was afraid of catching cold. 
Wilfrid produced his diary again, if a diary it was, and sat writing. 
I tried to court him into a walk and a smoke, but he said no ; he 
had a fancy for writing just then ; it was a humor whose visits were 
somewhat rare, and, therefore, the mood beintr on him, he wished to 
encourage it, as he had a very great deal to commit to paper. 

“Well,” said I, “I’ll just go and smoke one cigar, and then, with 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


145 


your permission, Miss Jennings, I’ll endeavor to win a sixpence from 
you at beggar-my-neighbor again, and you shall tell me my fortune 
once more.” 

I yawned as I stepped on deck. Dull enough work, by George! 
thought I. Only think of this sort of thing lasting till we get to the 
Cape, with Wilfrid’s intenti9n that even by that time, if we don’t 
fall in with the Shark, little more than a beginning shall have been 
made ! Let me once see the inside of Table Bay, and her ladyship 
may go hang for any further pursuit that I shall be concerned in. 
The worst of it was that poor Wilfrid’s troubles, warnings, health, 
and the like, engrossed Miss Jennings. Nearly all our talk was about 
my cousin. I had hoped that the sunshine of her nature, that was 
bright in her laugh just as you seemed to see it glowing in her hair, 
would have somewhat cleared the gloom that Wilfrid cast upon our 
social atmosphere ; but she seemed to lie under a kind of spell ; it 
was keen womanly sympathy, no doubt, beautiful for its sincerity, 
animated, too, by an honorable sensitiveness — by the feeling, I mean, 
that the runaway was her sister, and that she to that degree at least 
shared in the responsibility of the blow that had been dealt the poor 
fellow’s fond and generous heart. All this was doubtless as it should 
be ; nevertheless, her qualities went to fashion a behavior I could not 
greatly relish, simply because it came between us. Her thoughts were 
so much with my cousin and her sister’s wrong-doing that the side 
of her I was permitted to approach I found somewhat blind. 

All was now quiet on deck ; the concertina had ceased ; the watch 
below had gone to bed ; those who were on duty stowed themselves 
away in various parts, and sat, mere shapes of shadow, blending with 
the deep gloom between the bulwarks, nodding, but ready to leap to 
the first call. There were many shooting-stars this night; one of 
them scored the heavens with a bright line that lingered a full ten 
minutes after the meteor had vanished in a puff of spangles, and it 
was so glittering as to find a clear reflection in the smooth of the 
swell, where it writhed, broadened, and contracted like a dim silent 
serpent of prodigious length. There was some dew in the air, and 
the sparkle of it upon the rail and skylight flashed crisply to the 
stars to the quiet rise and fall of the yacht upon the black invisible 
heave that yearned the whole length of her, with an occasional purr 
of froth at the cut-water, and a soft, rippling, washing noise dying off 
astern into the gloom. The phosphorus in the sea was so plentiful 
that you might have thought yourself inside the tropics. It glared 
like sheet-lightning under each ebony slope running westward, and 
10 


146 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


every small play of froth there was the winking of it, like the first 
scratching of lucifer-matches. Under the counter where the wake 
was, the streaming of this light was like a thin sheathing of the water 
there with gold-beater’s-skin, rising and falling, and of a greenish 
tint, of the light of the moon. The fiash of the sea-glow forward 
when the bow broke the swell would throw out the round of the 
staysail and jib as though the clear lens of a bull’s-eye lamp had 
glanced upon the canvas. This greenish, baffling twinkling, this 
fading and flickering of flames over the side, thickened the obscu- 
rity to the sight within the rails. Somehow, too, the mystic illumi- 
nation seemed to deepen the stillness that lay upon the deep, spite of 
the welter and the breeze, that had weight enough to lift a streak of 
foam here and there. It might be that the sight of those fires made 
one think of the crackling and noise of flame, so that the very dumb- 
ness of the burning lay like a hush upon the darkling surface, with 
nothing aboard us to vex it, for our canvas swelled silent as if carved 
in mother-of-pearl, and not so much as the chafe of a rope or the 
stir of a sheave in its block fell from above to trouble the ear. 

I spied a figure standing a foot or two before the main-rigging, 
leaning over the side. Not knowing whether Finn or Crimp had the 
watch, and supposing this man to be one of them, I approached close 
and peered. 

“ Is that you, captain ?” said I, for the shadow of the rigging was 
upon him to darken him yet. 

“ No, sir, it’s me, Mr. Monson. Muffin, sir.” 

He had no need to mention his name, for his greasy, most re- 
markable voice, along with its indescribable tone of insincere, habit- 
ual obsequiousness, would have proclaimed him Muffin had he spoken 
as one of a crowd out of the bottom of a coal-mine. 

“ Feel sick?” said I. 

“ No, I am obliged to yon, sir,” he answered, with a simper in his 
tone. “ I am taking the liberty of breathing the hair just a little, 
sir.” 

I suppose you’ll not be sorry to get home again. Muffin ?” 

Indeed, sir,” he exclaimed, “ I shall be most humbly thankful, I 
assure you.” 

“ You’re an Englishman, aren’t you ?” 

“ Oh dear, yes ; quite English, sir. Born at ’Ammersmith, sir.” 

“ Then you ought to be very fond of the sea.” 

“ I should be more partial to it, sir, I believe,” said he, “ if it was 
a river. I have a natural aversion to the hocean, sir. I can swim and 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


147 


I can row. I’ve pulled on the Serpentine, sir, and four years ago I 
made a voyage to the Continong as far as Cally, and found the water 
very hentertaining. But there’s so much hocean here, sir, that it’s 
alarming to think of. On a river, Mr. Monson, sir, one can never 
seem distant; but here — why, sir, if my mother’s ’ouse was in one of 
them stars, it couldn’t seem farther off, and every day I suppose ’ll 
make the distance greater.” 

“ That you must expect,” said I, turning, with a notion of seeking 
Finn or Crimp. 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “ but could you tell me what 
them fires are that’s burning in the water?” 

“Phosphorus,” said 1. 

“ Phosphorus?” he ejaculated, as though startled, “ hoh, indeed, sir! 
And might I wenture to ask why it is that the water don’t put it out?” 

“There are more kinds of fire than one,” said I, laughing; and 
not much relishing the prostrative nature of the fellow’s respectful- 
ness, I walked aft. 

Close to a boat that hung inboard by the davits, only a few strides 
from where Muffin was standing, I espied another figure standing 
with his back against the rail. It proved to be Mr. Jacob Crimp. 

“ Plenty of fire in the water to-night,” said 1. 

“Is there?” he answered, slowly rounding his sturdy little figure 
to look. “ I ain’t took notice.” 

“Have you followed the sea many years, Mr. Crimp?” said I, feel- 
ing the need of a chat, and willing, moreover, to humor the quizzical 
mood that commonly came to me when I conversed with this sour 
little chap. 

“Thirty year.” 

“ A long spell !” 

“ Sight too long.” 

“ I suppose you’ll be settling down ashore soon ?” 

*‘Ay, if I ain’t drownded. Then^ settling ashore with me’ll sin- 
nify a hole in the airth.” 

“ Come, come !” said I, “ after thirty years of hard labor there’ll 
be surely dollars enough for a clean shirt and a roof. But you may 
be married, though ?” 

“ No, I ain’t,” he answered, with a snap like cocking a gun. 

“ Well, a sailor is a fool to get married,” said I. “ Why should a 
man burden himself with a wife whose society he cannot enjoy, with 
whom he accepts all the obligations of a home without the privilege 
of occupyiuj? it, save for a few weeks at a time?” 


148 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Well, I ain’t married, so I don’t care. It’s nothin’ to me what 
other men do. Talk o’ settling! If you come to my berth I’ll show 
you the fruits of thirty year of sea sarvice — an old chest, a soot or 
two of clothes, and ’bout as much ready cash as ud parchase a dose 
of ratsbane.” Here emotion choked him and he remained silent. 

At this moment a low, mocking, most extraordinary laugh came 
out of the blackness upon the sea in the direction I happened to be 
gazing in. The sound was a distinct Ha^ ha, ha ! and before the 
derisive, hollow, mirthless note had fairly died off the ear, a brisk, 
angry voice, within apparently a pistol-shot of us, exclaimed, “ That 
yacht is cursed P' A laugh like the first followed, and then all was 
still. 

Crimp started, and I was grateful to Heaven he did so, since it 
was an assurance the noise had been no imagination of my own. I 
will not deny that I felt exceedingly frightened : ray legs trembled 
like an up-and-down lead-line in a strong tide-way. It was not only 
the suddenness, the unexpectedness of such a thing; it was the com- 
bination of deep gloom upon the waters, the play of the phosphoric 
fires there, the oppressive mystery of the sombre vastness stretching 
from over our rail, as it seemed, to the immeasurably remote dim 
lights of heaven lying low upon the edge of the ocean, and languish- 
ing in the darkness there. 

“ Did you hear it ?” I cried, in a subdued voice, to Crimp. 

“ Ay,” responded the man, in a startled voice. “ I don’t see any- 
thing ; do you ?” 

I peered my hardest. “ Nothing,” I exclaimed. “ Hush I the cry 
may be repeated.” 

We strained our eyes, and ears too, but all was silent ; nor was 
there any livelier sparkle in the liquid dusk to indicate the dip of an 
oar or the stirring of the fiery water by a boat’s stem. 

“ Did the fellow at the wheel hear it, think you ?” said I. 

We both stepped aft, the mate looking to right and left, and even 
up at the stars overhead, as though he feared something would tum- 
ble down upon us out of the dark air. He approached the man who 
was at the helm, and said, “ Thomas, did you hear anybody a-laugh- 
ing-like just now out on the quarter there?” 

“ No,” answered the man. 

“ Are ye a bit deaf ?” 

“Ne’er a bit.” 

“ And you mean to say you hpard nothin^ 

Nothin’,” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


149 


Grumbling with astonishment and perplexity, Crimp turned to 
me. “ If it were fancy,” he muttered, “ call me a dawg’s flea.” 

I believed I could see Muffin’s figure still leaning over the rail. 
Had he heard the voice? As I passed the skylight I looked down 
and perceived him standing, with drooped head and folded arms, 
before Wilfrid in the cabin. My cousin appeared to be giving him 
some instructions. Advancing yet a little, I discovered that what I 
had taken to be the valet’s figure was merely a coil of rope on a pin, 
the outline of which was blackened up and enlarged to the propor- 
tions and even the posture of a human shape by the illusive charac- 
ter of the obscurity made by the shrouds just there. I threw my 
half-finished cigar overboard. 

“ Enough to make a man feel as if he’d like to be turned in,” said 
Crimp. “ It’s gone blooming cold, ha’n’t it ?” 

. “ It’s the most puzzling thing that ever happened to me,” said I ; 
“ but of course if we were in the secret we should find nothing won- 
derful in it. In the West Indian waters, you know, there is a fish 
to be caught that talks well enough to put a ship about. Who’s to 
tell, in a midnight blackness of this sort, what amazing marine thing 
may not rise to the surface and utter sounds which an alarmed ear 
would easily interpret into something confoundedly unpleasant ?” 

“ What did it say?” inquired Crimp. 

“ Why, after the laugh, ‘ That yacht's cursed!' then another laugh. 
So it seemed to be,” said I, with my eyes going blind against the 
blackness whence the noise had proceeded. 

“ That’s just what I heard,” said Crimp, gruffiy, “ exactly them 
words. Two ears ain’t a-going to get the same meaning out of 
what’s got no sense in it to start with.” 

“ Pooh !” I exclaimed, mentally protesting against an argument 
that was much too forcible to be soothing. “ What could it have 
been, man, if it were not, say, some great bird, mayhap, flapping 
past us unseen, and uttering notes which, since they sounded the 
same to you and me, would have sounded the same to the whole 
ship’s company had they been on deck listening ?” 

“ Beats all my going a-fishing, anyhow,” growled Crimp, going to 
the rail and looking over. 

“ Well, take my advice and don’t speak of it,” said I ; “ you’ll 
only get laughed at, especially as the fellow at the wheel heard 
nothing.” 

“His starboard ear’s calked; he’s hard o’ hearing,” rumbled 
Crimp. 


150 


an ocean TKACEEV. 


I walked to the taffrail and looked astern. There was nothing to 
he seen but faint, phantasmal sheets of phosphoric light, softly un- 
dulating with the brighter glow of our wake. I was really more agi- 
tated than I should have liked to own, and I must have stood for 
nearly a quarter of an hour speculating upon the incident and striv- 
ing to reassure myself. One thought led to another, and presently 
I found myself starting to a sudden odd suspicion that came into 
my head with the vivid gleam of a broad space of the sea-glow that 
flashed out bright as though it reflected a lantern hung over the 
side from the run of the yacht, where the bends hollowed in from 
the stern-post. It was a suspicion that had no reference whatever 
to the voice that Crimp and I had heard, yet it did me good by 
drawing my mind away from that bit of preternaturalism, and a few 
minutes later I found myself below, alongside of Miss Jennings. 

“The cigar you lighted to-night must have been an unusually big 
one,” said she, with a light glance, in which, however, it was easy 
to see that she noted my expression was something different from 
what was usual in me. 

I smiled, and measuring on ray Anger, told her that I had smoked 
but that much of the cigar, and thrown the rest of it overboard. 
Wilfrid sat at the table, with a tumbler of seltzer and brandy before 
him, and he was filling his large meerschaum pipe as I arrived. 

“ Help yourself, Charles,” said he, pointing to the swing-tray that 
was full of decanters. “I was about to join you on deck. How 
goes the night ?” 

“ Dark, but fine ; the wind just a small pleasant air. I am tired, 
or I should accompany you.” 

“ We are sailing, though, I hope ?” said he. 

“ Ay, some four knots or thereabouts, and heading our course. 
We have no right to grumble. It has blown a fine gale all day, and 
from the hour of our start down to the present moment I think we 
have had fairer weather and brisker breezes than we had a right to 
hope for.” 

He emptied his tumbler, lighted his pipe, and said that he would 
go and take a turn or two. “ If I should loiter,” he added, “ don’t 
sit up. If I am not to sleep when I turn in, the night will be all 
too long for me were I to go to bed at four o’clock in the morning.” 

As he mounted the cabin steps I rose to mix a glass of seltzer 
and brandy, and when I returned to my seat near Miss Jennings she 
at once said, “I hope nothing has happened to worry you, Mr. 
Monson ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


151 


“ Why do you ask ?” 

“ You had a slightly troubled look when you came into the cabin 
just now.” 

“ What will you think,” said I, “ if I tell you that I have had a 
warning ?” 

Her eyes glittered to the rounding of the brows, and her lips 
parted as though with a sigh of surprise. I shook my head, looking 
with a smile at her. “ I see how it is. If I am candid, you will 
think there are two instead of one !” 

“ No, no,” she cried. 

I was in the midst of telling her about the voice Crimp and I 
had heard when Muffin passed through the cabin, seemingly from 
his own berth on his way to his master’s. He held a little parcel 
of some kind. On arriving at the opening of the short alley, or 
corridor, that divided the after berths, he stopped, looked round, and 
said in his humblest manner, “ I beg your pardon, sir, but is the 
bayronet in his cabin, d’ye know, sir ?” 

“ He’s on deck,” I answered: 

“ Thank you, sir,” he ekclainied, and vanished. 

I proceeded with my story and finished it. 

“ It must have been some trick of the hearing, Mr. Monson,” ex- 
claimed the girl; “some sea-fowl winging slowly past, as you sug- 
gest, or — it is impossible to say. I can speak from experience. 
Often I have been alone and have heard my name called so distinctly 
that I have started and looked round, though there might have been 
nobody within a mile of me. The senses are conjurers; they are 
perpetually playing one tricks, and, which is very mortifying, with 
the simplest appliances.” 

“True enough that. Miss Jennings. The creak of a door will be 
a murdered man’s groan sometimes. I remember once being at a 
country house and holding a pistol in my hand ready to cover the 
figure of a man that was watching the old-fashioned building with 
burglarious intentness; which same man, after I had stood staring 
at him for a long twenty minutes, w^as resolved by the crawl of the 
moonshine into his original fabric and proportions of a neatly 
clipped bush. No ; I shall not suffer that mysterious voice to sink 
very deep. It was passing strange, and that’s all. I hope sour old 
Crimp has some sense of the ridiculous, and will keep his mouth 
shut. Heaven deliver us if he should take it upon himself to tell 
Wilfrid a mysterious sea- voice sung out just now that this yacht 
was cursed !” 


152 


xVN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


I rose, with a glance at the skylight. “Excuse me for a few 
minutes. I am going to Wilfrid’s cabin to confirm a suspicion that 
has entered my head. Should my cousin arrive while I am absent, 
endeavor to detain him here until I return. I shall know how to 
excuse myself for entering his bedroom.” 

She looked at me wonderingly, but asked no questions. I walked 
swiftly but softly to the corridor aft. Wilfrid’s cabin was on the 
port side. It was the aftermost berth, two cabins there having 
been knocked into one. I turned the handle of the door and en- 
tered. The flame of a silver-bright bracket-lamp fllled the place 
with light. It was a very handsome sea apartment, with no lack of 
mirrors, hangings, small costly furniture, all designed for the com- 
fort and happiness of her ladyship. I nimbly closed the door be- 
hind me, and stood for an instant beholding the precise spectacle I 
had entered fully expecting to witness. It was Muffin, who stood 
close against the bulkhead at the foot of the bunk my cousin oc- 
cupied, grasping in his left hand a small white jar such as might be 
used for jam, while in the other hand he flourished a brush, with 
which he was apparently painting or scoring marks upon the bulk- 
head as I entered. The occasional kick of the rudder, with frequent 
creaking, straining noises arising from the movement of the yacht, 
hindered him from hearing me turn the handle of the door and 
from being conscious of my presence, while I stood looking on. He 
had made some progress with his mysterious lettering; for, having 
dipped the brush into the jar, he fell to writing a big B after several 
preliminary flourishes of his arm as though he had a mind to give 
an artistic curve to the letter; he was then beginning to paint a 
small A, though the brush left no mark, when I exclaimed, “ How 
many b’s are there in baby ?” 

He looked round slowly, keeping his right hand, nevertheless, 
lifted, and preserving his posture in all save the turn of his head, as 
though he had been blasted into motionlessness by a flash of light- 
ning. I walked up to him. 

“So,” said I, “ you are the warning, eh ? You are the mysterious 
fiery message which has distracted my cousin for the last two days 
and nights, and which, if continued, must end in driving him mad? 
You scoundrel !” 

He faced round, his right hand slowly sinking to his side like a 
pump-handle gradually settling. For a moment there was a look of 
malevolent defiance in his face, but it yielded to one of consterna- 
tion, terror, eager entreaty. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


153 


“ Mr. Monson, sir,” he exclaimed, in a voice that was the very 
double - distilled extract of oily accent, “ I am discovered, sir ; I 
meant the honorable bayronet no ’arm. My ’umble wish is to get 
’ome.” 

“ What is that stuff you have there ?” 

“ A remedy for wermin, sir, which they told me was numerous on 
board ship.” 

“ Open that port-hole !” 

He did so after giving me a look as if he suspected I meant to 
squeeze him overboard through the aperture. 

“ Out now with that pot and brush.” 

He tossed them into the sea. I turned down the lamp till only 
the feeblest glimmer of flame remained, and then, sure enough, there 
stole out upon the bulkhead, in a feeble, green, glittering crawling 
that seemed to wink upon the sight with its coming and going, the 
words '‘'‘Return to Ba — ” 

“ Rub that off at once,” said I, and be quick about it, too. If 
Sir Wilfrid arrives I shall have to explain; and he’s a man to shoot 
you for such an act as this.” 

He pulled a pocket-handkerchief out of his coat-tail, and fell to 
rubbing the bulkhead with a terrifled hand, backing to see if the 
letters were gone, then applying himself afresh, breathing hard 
meanwhile and manifesting much fear, for no doubt he believed 
that my hint that Wilfrid would shoot him was very well founded, 
seeing that he had a half-crazy man to deal with in his master. He 
rubbed till nothing was left of the letters. I turned up the lamp 
and ordered him out of the cabin. He was about to address me. 

“ Not a word,” I cried, subduing my voice, for though my temper 
was such that I could scarce keep my hands off him, yet I was ex- 
ceedingly anxious, too, that Wilfrid should not overhear me nor 
come to his berth and find me in it with his valet. “Get away 
forward now to your own cabin.” 

“ For God’s sake, Mr. Monson, don’t tell Sir Wilfrid, sir,” he ex- 
claimed, in a hoarse, broken tone. 

“Away with you! I promise nothing. This is a matter to 
think over. I shall require to talk with you in the morning.” 

I held open the cabin door, and he passed out in a sidewise fash- 
ion, as if he feared I should hit him, and then travelled swiftly for- 
ward, with such a twinkling of the white socks bulging over his 
pumps as made me believe he ran. My cousin was still on deck. 
Miss Jennings gazed at me earnestly ; I looked to see if the coast 


154 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


was clear, atid exclaimed : “ It proved as I had supposed. I have 
interpreted the warning Wilfrid has received.” 

She gazed at me in silence. 

“The mysterious handwriting is MuflSn’s,” I continued. “The 
flaming admonition is wrought by a brush dipped in a phosphoric 
composition for — for — beetles I” 

“You mean to say, Mr. Monson — ” She paused to take a long 
breath, while her eyes shone with astonishment. 

“ The long and short of it is. Miss Jennings,” said I, “ that our 
friend MuflBn hates the sea ; he has been cursing the voyage from 
the bottom of his soul pretty nearly ever since we started, and has 
hit upon this device to appeal to Wilfrid’s instincts as a father, and 
to his poor, weak, credulous nerves as — as — well, as a man not 
wholly sound, in the hope, not ill-founded, that provided the warn- 
ing be repeated often enough, my cousin would return to baby.” 

“The horrid wretch ! You actually found him — ” 

“ Yes, he had got as far as Return to Ba — ” 

“ Shall you tell Wilfrid?” 

“ No,” I answered, “ not a word must be said to him on the sub- 
ject. I told Mufifin — and I believe in my own notion, too — that if 
ray cousin were to hear that the sufferings occasioned him by the 
mysterious writing on his cabin wall were due to a trick of his valet, 
he would pistol the scoundrel. No, we must keep our counsel. I 
shall confer with Finn in the morning, and contrive that our mel- 
ancholy humorist be wholly and effectually sundered henceforth 
from all intercourse with this end of the yacht.” 

Well, she was thunderstruck, and could hardly be brought to 
credit that a servant should play his master so cruel a trick. I told 
her that in my opinion Muffin would do well as keeper of a private 
lunatic asylum, since so artful a wretch might be warranted to drive 
any one whose nerves were not “ laid up ” with galvanized iron 
strands into a condition of sullen imbecility or clamorous lunacy within 
any time specified by the friends and relatives of the sufferer. When, 
however, the pretty creature’s surprise had somewhat abated, she ex- 
pressed herself as wonderfully grateful that the discovery had been 
so early made. “ Had the writing been continued,” she said, “ I am 
sure it would have ended in completely crazing poor Wilfrid. And 
I am glad, too, for another reason, Mr. Monson — it proves, at all 
events, that there was nothing insane in your cousin’s fancy of a 
warning. After all, the healthiest-minded person would be startled 
and dismayed, and afterwards, perhaps, dangerously affected, by find- 


AN OCEAN TllAGEOr. 


155 


ing a reference to his baby shining out upon him in the dark, night 
after night.” 

“I believe I should have got up and rubbed the reference out,” 
said I, “ had it glimmered upon me.” 

“ But you are not Wilfrid. What made you suspect Muffin ?” 

“ I suspected not Muffin, but a trick, and then that Muffin must 
be the man. It came to me with the sight of a bright sheet of 
phosphoric fire fiaming off the yacht’s quarter as I overhung the 
rail, staring into the gloom and puzzling over the cry Crimp and I 
had heard. One can’t give a reason for the visitations of fancy. 
Instinct I take to be the soul’s forefinger, with which it points out 
things to the reason.” 

“ I hope it will point to the true cause of the mysterious voice 
you heard,” she exclaimed, smiling, but with something of uneasiness 
in her face nevertheless. 

We continued chatting a little; she then went to her cabin. 
Soon after she had withdrawn, Wilfrid arrived. He yawned, and 
without seating himself, spoke of the weather, the yacht’s progress, 
and other commonplace matters. For my part, I had too much on 
my mind just then to feel in the humor to detain him, so after a 
few sentences as carelessly spoken as I could manage, I advised him, 
after his sleepless nights, to try once more for a spell of rest ; and so 
saying, went away to my own berth. 


156 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

MUFFIN GOES FORWARD. 

I ROSE next morning shortly after seven, bathed, and went to the 
cabin for a cup of coffee. I could see through the skylight that it 
was a fine day. The air showed a bright blue against the glass, and 
a rich temple of sunlight was on the thick crystal of every weather 
port-hole, the glory rippling with the reflective throbbing and run- 
ning of the sea as it broke upon the polished panels abreast or 
flashed in the confronting mirrors. The ocean was quiet, too ; the 
heave of the yacht was gentle, though the heel of her gave assurance 
of a breeze of wind. The two stewards were busy in the cabin. I 
knew that Finn would have the forenoon watch, since Crimp had 
had charge from eight to midnight, and I called to the head-steward 
to know if the captain was about. 

“ Not yet, sir, I believe.” 

“ Take my compliments to him, and say I should like to see him 
at once, if possible — here in the cabin, I mean.” 

While I waited. Muffin, hearing my voice, came from his berth. I 
watched him out of the corner of my eyes ; he slowly advanced, in 
a sort of writhing way, making many grimaces as he approached, as 
if in the throes of rehearsing a speech, and presently stood before 
me, first casting a look at the second steward, who was polishing a 
looking-glass, and then clasping his hands before him and hanging 
his head. 

“ Mr. Monson, I ’umbly ask your pardon, sir. May I beg that out 
of your kind ’art you will overlook my doings last night ? Sir, I do 
not find myself partial to the hocean, and my desire is to return 
’ome, sir. I meant no ’arm. I would not wrong an ’air of Sir Wil- 
frid’s ’ead. My five years’ character from the Right Honorable the 
Lord Sandown speaks to my morals, sir. I am sincerely remorse- 
ful, Mr. Monson, and trust to be made ’appy by your forgiving me, 
sir.” 

I listened to what he had to say, and then exclaimed ; “ My for- 
giveness has nothing to do with the matter. You are not a fit per- 
son to wait upon Sir Wilfrid Monson, and — But I shall have 
something to tell you a little later on. Meanwhile you can go.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 157 

He said, unctuously, “Am I to take Sir Wilfrid his ’ot water as 
usual, sir ?” 

“Yes,” I said, “continue to wait on him.” 

He plucked up at this, and withdrew with an ill-dissembled smirk 
upon his countenance. Presently Captain Finn came trundling 
down the cabin steps, cap in hand, his long face bright with recent 
cleansing, and full of expectation. I asked him to sit, and then, 
without a word of preface, I bluntly told him about the “ warnings ” 
my cousin had received for two nights running, and how last night 
my suspicion in some unaccountable way having been aroused, I en- 
tered the baronet’s berth and found Muffin painting the sentence in 
a vermin-killing composition of phosphorus. Finn whistled. 

“ The weasel !” he cried ; “ how is he to be punished for this ? 
Will ye have him ducked from the yard-arm, or seized up aloft, or 
played on with the hose for spells of half an hour, or whipped up 
for a grease-down job that’ll last him nigh a day ? Say the word, 
sir. I feel to want the handling of a chap whose veins look to run 
slush, to judge by his color and the lay of his hair.” 

“ No,” said I ; “no need to deal with him as you suggest. But 
he must be turned out of this end of the vessel and sent into the 
forecastle. Before we decide, however, can you make use of him 

“ Ay can I. Leave him to me, your honor,” said Finn, grinning. 
“ I’ll make a man of him.” 

“ Steward,” I called, “ send Muffin to me.” 

The valet arrived, looking hard at Finn. I made some excuse to 
get the stewards out of the cabin, and then said : “ Now, Muffin, at- 
tend. You are at once to decide whether you will go forward 
among the men, live with them in the forecastle, and do such work 
as Captain Finn appoints, or whether Sir Wilfrid shall be told of 
last night’s business, that he may deal with you as he thinks proper.” 

Finn gazed at him with a frown and a cheek purpled by indigna- 
tion and contempt. The fellow fixed his dead black eye on me, and 
said, “ I would rather go ’ome, sir.” 

“ I dessay you would !” burst out Finn. “ How will ’ee travel ? 
By locomotive or post-chay ? By my grandmother’s bones, if one 
of my men had played such a trick on me as you’ve played on your 
master. I’d spread-eagle him with these here hands if he was as tall 
as my main-mast, and lay on till there wasn’t a rag of fiesh left to 
tickle.” 

I motioned silence, with an indication with my head in the direc- 
tion of Sir Wilfrid’s berth. 


158 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Take your choice, and be sharp about it,” said I, turning hotly 
to Muffin, whose very sleekness at such a time was a kind of inso- 
lence in him somehow ; “ either decide to be dealt with by Sir Wil- 
frid, who probably will shoot you for what you have done, or go to 
him after he has risen, tell him that you have made up your mind 
to discontinue your services as a valet, and that you have requested 
Captain Finn to place you upon the articles as a boy.” 

“ Ay, as a boy,” echoed Finn, in a half-suppressed note of storm, 
and fetching his leg a mighty thump with his clinched fist. 

Muffin’s left leg fell away, he clasped his hands in a posture of 
prayer upon his shirt-front, and after looking in a weeping way from 
Finn to me, and from me to Finn, he said, snuffling as he spoke, 
“Gentlemen, give me an arf-hour to think it over, I beg of you.” 

I pulled out my watch. “ I must have your decision by eight 
o’clock,” said I. “See to it. If you do not decide for yourself, I 
shall choose for you, and give my cousin the whole truth ; though 
for your sake,” I added, with a menacing look at him, “ as well as 
for his, I am very desirous indeed that he should remain ignorant of 
your conduct. Go !” 

I sat talking with Finn. His indignation increased upon him as 
we spoke of Muffln’s behavior. 

“ It was enough to drive his honor clean mad, sir,” he exclaimed. 
“ Why, though there’s little I believes in outside what my senses 
tells me of, I allow I should feel like jumping overboard if so be on 
putting out the light I found a piece of adwice wrote upon the dark 
in letters of fire. But I’ll work his old iron up for that job. 
There’s something leagues out of the ordinary in that there slush- 
made cove, sir. ’Tain’t that I hobjects to a man who never looks 
me in the eye. But there’s something in the appearance of that 
there Muffin which makes me think that if he could pull his heart 
out of his breast he’d find it like a piece of rotten ship’s-bread, full 
of weevils and holes.” 

“ The man is pining for the shore,” said I. “ The fellow thought 
to work upon the weak si(^e of my cousin’s intellect. He meant no 
more, I believe, than to frighten Sir Wilfrid into returning. He re- 
mains a very good valet all the same, though we must have him out 
of this. He will not be the only servant in the world who has pro- 
cured his or her ends by working on the master’s or mistress’s 
fears.” 

“ Well, I suppose not, sir,” said Finn ; “ taking men-servants all 
round, they’re a bad lot. I never yet see one, specially if he wore 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


159 


big calves and had got white hair, but that I felt a longing to have 
him at sea for a month. By-the-way, sir, talking of this here Muf- 
fin’s mystifying of his honor, what d’ye think,-Mr. Monson, sir ? 
Blowed if old Crimp, who I shouldn’t ha’ credited with a single 
idea outside the tar-bucket, hain’t gone and fallen superstitious! 
When I relieved him at midnight he up and spins a long twister 
about you and him having heard a woice holloaing a curse upon this 
yacht away out on the starboard quarter somewhere.” 

He broke into a low, deep sea-laugh, which he endeavored to 
check by clapping his hand to his mouth. 

“We heard something,” said I, “that sounded like a voice, and 
we made out the noise to signify the same thing. It may have been 
a bird, or some mysterious fish come up to breathe, or some singu- 
lar sound produced by the yacht herself; no matter what, I have 
dismissed it from my mind.” 

“Poor old Jacobi” he continued, smothering another laugh; 
“ why, sir, he’d actually thought hisself into a clam when I went on 
deck, and said he reckoned this part of the hocean much colder 
than the coast o’ Greenland. Jacob’s being so werry commonplace 
is the reason of my thinking nothin’ of the yarn. Had he even a 
little bit more mind than belongs to him I’d be willing to allow his 
story was a queer one ; but he’s so empty of any sort o’ intellects, 
short of the ones that he needs to enable him to keep a lookout and 
attend to the navigation of the craft, that his werry hollowness 
touches t’other extreme of a brain chock-a-block with fantastical 
ideas; by which I mean that I’d as lief attend to a madman’s no- 
tion of a strange woice as to Jacob’s. Not but that he ain’t as 
trustworthy, practical a sailor as I could wish to have by my side if 
I ever found myself in a quandary.” 

I cast my eye at the clock under the skylight. As I did so Muf- 
fin came sliding towards us with exactly the same sort of gait and 
countenance you would expect in a well-practised funeral mute. 
He approached close before speaking, and postured in front of me, 
preserving a respectful silence, while he kept his eyes fastened on 
the deck. 

“Well?” said I. 

“ I’ve been considering the matter, sir, and beg to state that I’ve 
made up my mind.” 

“ Well ?” I repeated. 

“ It might ’urt Sir Wilfrid’s feelings, gentlemen, if you, Mr. Mon- 
son, sir, explained away the cause of what had alarmed him, and I’ll 


160 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


not deny that as his strength of mind isn’t such as to give him con- 
trol over his passions, sir, I should go in fear. Which being so. I’m 
willing to tell him that I desire to discontinue my services as valet, 
and should be glad to become what I’ve ’eard Capt’n Finn describe 
as an ’and until such times as we fall in with a ship that may be 
willing to carry me ’ome. To which, Mr. Monson, sir, and you, 
Capt’n Finn, I trust, gentlemen, both, you’ll have no objection.” 

I preserved my gravity with difficulty. 

“ Very well,” said I, witnessing in the vague, indeterminable twin- 
kle of the unpolished jet of his eye that he detected in me the 
mirth I flattered myself I had concealed ; “ after breakfast you will 
convey your resolution to Sir Wilfrid, of course taking care to in- 
sist if he should object, for after what has happened, your connec- 
tion with him must ceased 

“ As you wish, sir,” he exclaimed, giving me a bow with the 
whole spine of him ; “ but, gentlemen, I should like to state that 
whatever may be the work Capt’n Finn puts me to, I would rather 
do it as an ’and than as a boy.” 

I felt a bit sorry for the poor devil. It seemed to me that he 
bad accepted his alternative with some pluck. 

“ A boy is the next grade to ordinary seaman,” said I ; “ you will 
be a hand just the same.” 

“What can you do?” exclaimed Finn, running his eye over the 
figure of the man with an expression that was not one of quite un- 
mixed contempt. “ Can ’ee go aloft ?” 

The fellow clasped his hands, and turned up the whites of his 
eyes. “ Not to save my precious soul, sir.” 

“ You can row,” said I. 

“I’ll feather an oar agin any Thames waterman,” exclaimed 
Muffin. 

“ Enough has been said,” I exclaimed, rising. “ The stewards 
wait to lay the cloth for breakfast and so saying, I mounted on 
deck, followed by the captain, who, after I had exchanged a few 
words with him, went forward to break his fast before relieving old 
Crimp. 

There was a large, full-rigged ship on the w^eather-beam. We 
were slowly passing her. She was an East Indiaman, I think, of a 
frigate-like stateliness, with her white band and black ports, and her 
spacious rounds of canvas tapering in spires to the delicate gossamer 
of the topmost cloths. The red ensign was waving at her peak as 
it wf^ at ours, but then she was from England, as we were, and had 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


161 

no more news to give us than we her. The bosoms of her canvas 
arched towards us, with the rigging under each curve fine as wire 
against the sky, that sloped to the horizon, white and blinding as ir- 
radiated steel with the eastern gushing of glory there. There was 
just swell enough to heave a little space of her coppered fore-foot out 
of the glittering brine, that came brimming to her in a liquid blue 
light, and the rhythmic fiash of the metal over the curl of snow at 
the stem gave an inexpressible grace to the dignity and majesty of 
the lofty and swelling fabric of cream-colored cloths, each softened 
by an airy pinion of shadow at its lee clew. ’Twas wonderful, the 
magic that ship had to vitalize and to subdue to human sympathy 
the brilliant, weltering wilderness of the morning ocean. She car- 
ried the thoughts away to the Thames and to Gravesend, to leave- 
takings and weeping women, and the coming and going of boats, to 
the hurricane note of the Jacks getting the anchor, to the waving of 
handkerchiefs up on the poop, to the smell of hay for the live-stock, 
the gabble of poultry, the cries of children, the loud calls of officers, 
the ceaseless movements of passengers, stewards, friends, sailors, 
crowding and elbowing, talking, shaking hands, and crying upon the 
main-deck. All this, I say, she made one think of, with a fancy, 
too, of the rushing Hoogly, a burning atmosphere sickly with the 
smell of the incense of the hubble-bubble, with a flavor of hot curry 
about, a dead, black body gliding slowly past the lip of the rushing 
stream against the ship’s bow, and seething to the gangway ladder, 
the fiery cabins o’ nights vibratory with the horns of the mosquitoes, 
like a distant concert of jews-harps mingling with the distant un- 
earthly wail of the jackal. Pooh ! ’twas a fit of imagination for its 
torrid atmosphere and Asiatic smells to make one mechanically mop 
the brow with one’s handkerchief. Why, far off as that Indiaman 
was, the clear, cool wind seemed to breeze down hot from her, with 
an odor of bamboo and cocoanut-rope and chafing gear, wrought 
from the jungle with strange aromas of oils along with the shriek of 
the paroquet and the hoarse musings of the macaw. I turned to 
surly old Jacob. 

“Good-morning, Mr. Crimp.” 

“ Marning.” 

“Fine ship out yonder.” 

“ Well, I’ve seen uglier vessels.” 

I approached him close. “ Heard any more voices, Mr. Crimp ?” 

“ No,” he answered, thrusting his fingers into the door-m^t Qf 
pm, upon his throat, “ and I don’t want to,” 

U 


162 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ I advised you to keep your counsel,” said I, “ but I find that you 
have spoken to Captain Finn.” 

“ Who wouldn’t ? My mind ain’t a deinijean, smother me ! It’s 
not big enough to hold the likes of last night’s job. Told the capt’n ? 
’Course I did.” 

I saw that he was a mule of a man, and not proper to reason with. 
I said, with an air of indifference : “ Have you thought the thing 
over? Was it a bird, as I said at the time, or a noise breaking out, 
perhaps, from the inside of the yacht, and, by deception of the hear- 
ing, sounding in syllables, apparently, away out upon the sea ?” 

He eyed me dully, and after a stupid, staring pause, exclaimed, “ I 
wish you hadn’t heard it.” 

“ Why ?” 

“ Why ? ’Cause then I might ha’ believed it was my fancy ; but 
as I says to the capt^n, two collected intellects ain’t going to get the 
same meaning out o’ what’s got no sense. I hope that this here 
trip may turn out all right, that’s all. I’ve been a-going to sea now 
for thirty year, but smite me if ever I was in a wessel afore that was 
damned in the first watch by a woice a-sounding out of the black- 
ness with nothin’ for it to come from.” 

The breakfast- bell now rang, and I went below not a little sur- 
prised by this exhibition of superstitious alarm in so sour and mat- 
ter-of-fact a seaman as Jacob Crimp. For my part, though I admit 
the thing greatly puzzled me, it was only as some conjuring trick 
might. Perhaps, with old Crimp, I should have been better satisfied 
had but one of us heard the voice ; or, presuming us both to have 
caught the sound, had we each made a different sentence of it. There 
lay the real oddness of the incident, but as to supposing there was 
anything supernatural in it, I should have needed the brains of my 
cousin, who could interpret Muffin’s stale and vulgar trick into a sol- 
emn injunction, perhaps from Heaven, to think so. 

Wilfrid joined us at breakfast ; he made a good meal, and was 
easy in his spirits. I asked him if he had been troubled with any 
more warnings. He answered no, nothing whatever had occurred to 
disturb him. He had slept soundly, and had not passed so good a 
night for days and days. “ But,” said he, with a glance round the 
cabin, for the valet had been hanging about, though he did not 
station himself behind his master’s chair as heretofore, “ if I were 
ashore I should be prepared for another kind of warning. I mean 
a warning from Muffin, if I may judge hj his face an4 
Something is wrong with the fellow,” 


AN OCE.VN TRAGEDY. 


163 


“You once suspected his sanity,” said I, smiling. “Upon my 
word, I cannot persuade myself that such a dial-plate as his covers 
sound clock-work. He strikes wrongly. I’m sure. He don’t keep 
true time, Wilf.” 

“ Do you think so, really ?” he exclaimed, with some anxiety. 

“Do you believe Mutlin to be perfectly sound. Miss Jennings?” 
said I, giving her a significant glance. 

“ I should be very sorry to trust him,” she answered, with a spir- 
ited gaze at Wilfrid. 

The subject dropped. Our conversation went to the Indiaman, 
that lay for a little, while we sat at the breakfast-table, framed in the 
cabin port-hole abreast of us, coining and going with the light reel of 
the yacht, but whenever set for a moment, then the most dainty and 
lovely image imaginable, like to some small, choice, wondrous carv- 
ing in mother-of-pearl of a ship shot with many subtle complexions 
of light, as though you viewed her through a rainbow of fairy-like 
tenuity. Then, having talked of her, we passed on to our voyage, 
till on a sudden a fit of sullenness fell upon Wilfrid, and he became 
moody ; but happily I had by this time finished my breakfast, and 
as I had no notion of an argument, nor of courting one of his hot, 
reproachful, vexing speeches touching his own anguish and my cold- 
ness, I left the table, telling Miss Jennings that she would find her 
chair, rugs, and novel ready for her on deck when she should be 
pleased to join me. 

She arrived alone in about half an hour. There was something 
so fragrant in her presence, so fiower-like in her aspect, that she 
could not approach you but that it was as though she brought a 
nosegay with her whose perfume had a sweetness for every sense of 
the body. We had not been long together, yet already I might 
have guessed what had happened with me by noticing in myself the 
impatience with which I desired her company, the repeated glances 
I would send at the companion-hatch if I expected her on deck, the 
very comfortable feeling of satisfaction, the emotion, indeed, of quiet 
delight that possessed me when I had her snug by my side in her 
chair, with no one to break in upon us but Wilfrid, who troubled us 
very little in this way. I remember, this morning, when I took the 
novel off her lap to see what progress she had made in it, thinking, as 
my glance went in a smile from the mark in the middle of chapter 
the third to her eyes, in which lay a delicate light of laughter, that 
before long we should be having the weather of the tropics, the radi- 
ant ivory of the equinoctial rqoon, the dew-laden stillness of the equa- 


164 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


torial calm, and that there might come night after night of oceanic 
repose for us to enjoy — and enjoy alone ; but I almost started to 
the fancy, for it was a sort of secret recantation, a quiet confession 
of my heart to my reason, that though, to be sure, this voyage was 
to be viewed as a goose-chase, I was beginning to feel willing that 
it should not be so brief as I was quite lately trusting it would prove. 
No wonder the old poets represented love as a kind of madness, see- 
ing that a man who suffers from this disorder will, like a madman, 
experience twenty different moods in an hour. 

“You do not appear to find the dukes and earls of this star-and- 
garter novel very engaging company,” said I, placing the book in 
her lap again. 

“ It is a good sort of novel to dream over,” said she ; “ the moment 
I look at it I find my mind thinking of something else.” 

“A pity Wilfrid cannot read,” said I; “ but his mind, like the poet’s 
eye, glances too much. There are two unfailing tests of brain pow- 
er — the appreciation of humor, and the capacity of concentration.” 

“ Might not a very clever man laugh at a very silly joke ?” she 
asked. 

“ Yes, but his laugh will be of a different sort from a stupid fel- 
low’s at the same joke. Where did you leave Wilfrid ?” 

“ In the cabin. MuflBn came up to me just now, apparently on 
his way to his master, and begged me in a most strange, suppliant, 
hollow way to implore you not to allow Sir Wilfrid to suspect that 
the handwriting was a trick ; ‘ for,’ said the man, ‘ if he gets that 
notion into his head he will suspect me, and then, miss,’ he said, ‘ the 
baronet might take my life, for if he’s scarcely responsible for what 
he does when he’s in a good temper, what would he not be capable of 
when he’s in a dreadful passion ?’ This was in effect what he said. 
His language and manner are not to be imitated. I told him very 
coldly that neither of us was likely to tell Sir Wilfrid, not because 
we should not be very pleased to see him punished by his master as 
he deserved, even though it came to his shooting him,” she exclaimed, 
lifting her eyes to mine with roguish enjoyrnent of Muffin’s terror, 
“ but because we were anxious that Sir Wilfrid should be spared the 
humiliation of the discovery.” 

“ Muffin will be out of this end of the ship before noon,” said I. 

“ What have you arranged ?” 

“ His name will be entered in the articles as a boy ; that is, as a 
sailor below the grade of an ordinary searpan,” 

“ Is he to work as a sailor ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


165 


“ Finn will try him.” 

“The poor wretch!” she cried, looking aloft; “have you ever 
observed his feet? Such a man as that cannot climb.” 

“ They’ll put him to deck-work,” said I, “ scrubbing, polishing, 
scraping, painting.” She fell silent, with her gaze upon the open 
book. Presently she sent a slow, thoughtful look along the sea, and 
sighed. 

“ Mr. Monson, I wonder if we shall fall in with the Shark 

I shook my head. 

“ But why no ?” she exclaimed, with a pretty pettishness. 

“ She might be yonder at this moment,” said I, pointing to the 
light-blue horizon that lined like an edging of glass the sky upon 
our starboard beam. “ Who is to tell ? Our field is too big for such 
a chase.” 

“ We shall find them at Table Bay, then,” she said, defiantly. 

“ Or, rather, let us hope that they will find us there. But suppose 
we pick the- Shark up ; suppose we are lying in Table Bay when she 
arrives. What is to happen ? What end is to be served ? On my 
honor, if Lady Monson were my wife — ” I snapped my fingers. 

“You are cold-hearted.” 

“I am practical.” 

“You would not extend your hand to lift up one who has fallen?” 

“Do not put it so. The girl I marry will, of course, be an an- 
gel.” Her lips twitched to a smile. “ If she expands her wings and 
flies away from me, am I to pick up a blunderbuss with the notion 
of potting her as she makes sail ? No, let her go. She is, indeed, 
still an angel, but a bad angel. A bad angel is of no use to a man. 
She poisons his heart; she addles his brains; she renders his sleep 
loathsome with nightmares ; she buries a stiletto in the vitalest part 
of his honor. Follow her, forsooth 1 I could be eloquent,” said I, 
with a young man’s confident laugh; “but I must remember that I 
am talking to Laura Jennings.” 

We were interrupted by Wilfrid. He came slowly forking up 
through the hatch in his long-limbed way, and approached us with 
excitement in his manner. 

“ Mad !” he cried, with a look over his shoulder. “ Mad, as you 
say, by George ! You were both right, and I am deuced glad to have 
made the discovery. Why, here was this fellow, d’ye see, Charles, 
hanging about me at all hours of the day, free to enter my room at 
any time when I might be in bed and sound asleep I Confoundedly 
odd, though.” 


166 


A.V OCIiAN tragedy. 


“Are you talking of Muffin?” said I. 

“Ay, of Muffin, to be sure.” 

“He’s not gone mad, I hope?” 

“I think so, anyway,” he answered, with a wise nod that was 
made affecting to me by the tremble in his lids, and the childish 
assumption of shrewdness and knowingness you found in his eyes 
and the look of his face. 

“What has he done?” asked Miss Jennings, playing with the 
leaves of the volume on her knee. 

“Why, he just now came to my cabin,” answered my cousin, 
sending a glance at the skylight, “ and told me that he was weary 
of his duties as a valet, and desired to be at once released. I said 
to him, ‘What do you mean? We’re at sea, man. This is not a 
house that you can walk out from !’ He answered he knew that. 
He desired to go into the forecastle and work as a sailor — as a 
sailor ! Figure Muffin astride of a lee yard-arm in a gale of wind !” 
He broke into one of his short roars of laughter, but immediately 
grew grave, and proceeded : “ There w^as a tone of insolence in the 
fellow that struck me. It might have been because he had made 
up his mind, expected, that I should refuse, and had come resolved 
to bounce, eve n to Offensively} bounce me into consenting. Besides, 
too, there was an expression in his eye which satisfied me that yours 
and Laura’s suspicions were sound — were sound. But I did not 
need to witness any physical symptom of mental derangement. 
Enough, surely, that this sleek, obsequious, ghostly, though some- 
what gouty rascal, whom 1 cannot imagine fit for any post in the 
world but that of valet, should throw’ up his comfortable berth with 
us in the cabin to become what he calls ‘ an ’and.’ Ha, ha, ha !” 
His vast, odd shout of laughter rang through the yacht from end 
to end. 

“ Of course,” said I, “ you told him to go forward ?” 

“ Oh, certainly. I should not love to have a lunatic waiting upon 
me. Why, damme, there are times when I have let that fellow 
shave me. But — I say, Charles — Muffin as an ’and — eh ?” 

He turned on his heel, shaking with laughter, and walked up to 
Finn, to whom I heard him tell the whole story, though repeatedly 
interrupting himself with a jerky, noisy shout of merriment. He 
asked the skipper what work he could put Muffin to, and Finn 
rumbled out a long answer, but they stood at too great a distance 
to enable me to catch all that was said. Presently Finn put his 
head into the companion-hatchway and called. After a httle Muffin 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


167 


emerged. Wilfrid recoiled when he saw the man, turned his back 
upon him, and stepped hastily right aft past the wheel. I whis- 
pered to Miss Jennings: “Did you mark that? Each will go in 
terror of the other now, I suppose; Wilfrid, because he thinks 
Muflfin mad, and Muffin because he thinks that Wilfrid, should he 
get to hear the truth, will shoot him.” 

“ This way, my lad,” cried Finn, in a Cape Horn voice, and a half- 
smile that twisted the hole in the middle of his long visage till it 
looked like the mouth of a plaice. They both went forward and 
disappeared. The sailors, who were at work about the deck, stared 
hard at Muffin as he passed them, shrewdly guessing that something 
unusual had happened, and not a little astonished to observe the 
captain conducting him between-decks to the mariners’ parlor. Soon 
the skipper came up, and called to a large, burly, heavily whiskered 
man, who, as I had gathered, was a sort of acting boatswain, though 
I believe he had not signed in that capacity, but had been appointed 
by Finn to oversee the crew as being the most experienced sailor on 
board. The skipper talked with him, and the heavily whiskered 
man nodded vehemently, with a broad smile that compressed his 
face into a thousand wrinkles, under the rippling of which his little 
eyes seemed to founder altogether. Then Finn came aft, and Wil- 
frid and he fell to pacing the deck. 

Miss Jennings read ; I smoked occasionally, giving her an excuse 
to leave her book by asking a question, or uttering some common- 
place remark. I was lying back in my easy, lounging deck-chair, 
with my eyes sleepily following the languid sweep of the maintop- 
mast head, where the truck showed like a circle of hoar-frost 
against the airy blue that floated in its soft, cool, bright tint, to the 
edges of the sails, whose brilliant whiteness seemed to overflow the 
bolt-ropes, and frame them with a narrow band of pearl-colored film, 
when Miss Jennings suddenly exclaimed, “ Oh, Mr. Monson, do look !” 

I started, and following the direction of her gaze, spied Muffin 
standing near the galley, rigged out as a sailor. There may have 
been a slop-chest on board — I cannot tell ; perhaps Finn had bor- 
rowed the clothes for the fellow from one of the seamen ; anyway, 
there stood Muffin divested of his genteel frock-coat, his gentlemanly 
cravat, and black cloth unmentionables, and equipped in a sailor’s 
jacket of that period, a coarse colored shirt, rough duck or canvas 
breeches, whose bell-shaped extremities entirely concealed his gouty 
ankles. His head was protected by a nautical straw hat, somewhat 
battered, with one long ribbon floating down his back, under the 


168 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


brim of which his yellow face showed with the primrose tincture 
of the Chinaman ; while his dead black eyes, gazing languishingly 
our way, looked the deader and the blacker for the plaster-like 
streak of hair that lay along his brow, as though one of the Jacks 
had scored a line there with a brush steeped in liquid pitch. 

“Heavens, what an actor the fellow would make!” said I, the 
laugh that seemed to have risen to my throat lying checked there 
by wonder and even admiration of the astonishing figure the man 
cut in his new attire. The burly, heavily whiskered salt rolled up 
to him. What Muffin said I could not hear, but there was the 
air of a respectful bow in the posture of his odd form, and my ear 
easily imagined the oily tone of his replies to the huge sailor. They 
crossed to the other side of the deck out of sight. 

Shortly afterwards I left my seat to join Wilfrid, and then the 
first object that I beheld on the port side of the vessel was Muffin 
washing the side of the galley, with a bucket of water at his feet, 
and the heavily whiskered man looking on. Well, thought I, turn- 
ing on my heel with a laugh, ’twill make home the sweeter to him 
when he gets there, and meanwhile Wilfrid will be free from all 
further phosphoric visitations. 


AH OCDaH TitAGEDY. 


169 


CHAPTER XV. 

I BOARD A WRECK. 

The time slipped by. Life is monotonous at sea, and though the 
days seem to have speeded quickly past when one looks back, they 
appear to be crawling along on all fours when one looks ahead. We 
sighted nothing that carried the least resemblance to the vessel we 
were in chase of. Within a week we spoke two ships, both Eng- 
lishmen, one a fine, tall, black clipper-craft from Sydney, New South 
Wales, full of colonials bound to the Old Country for a cruise among 
the sights there ; the other a little North-country brig, laden down 
to her chain-plates, in charge of the very tallest man I ever saw in 
my life — this side, I mean, of the giants who go on show — with a roar- 
ing voice that smote the ear like the blast of a discharged piece ; but 
neither vessel gave us any news of the Shark. No craft of the kind 
had been sighted or heard of by either of them. 

It was as I expected. For my part, the adventure remained a 
most ridiculous undertaking, and never more so than when I thought 
of the speck a ship made in the vast blue eye of the wide ocean. 
We fell in with some handsome breezes for travelling, several of 
which drove us through it in thunder, with a hill of foam on either 
quarter, and an acre of creaming white, spreading under the chaste 
golden beauty the yacht carried on her stem-head. The wind flashed 
blue into the violet hollows of the canvas, the curves of whose round 
breasts shone out past the shadowings to the sun, and rang splitting 
upon the iron taut rigging of the driven craft, with joyous hunting- 
notes in its echoings, as though the chase were in view, and there 
were spirits in the air hallooing us into a madder speeding. 

Wilfrid and Finn and I hung over the chart, calculating, with so- 
ber faces, finding our position to be there, and then there, and then 
there, till we worked out an average speed from the hour of our de- 
parture that caused the skipper to swear if the Shark was not al- 
ready astern of us she could not be very far ahead, unless a great 
luck of wind had befallen her; a conjecture scarce fair to put down 
as a basis to build our figures upon, since it was a hundred to one 
that her fortune in the shape of breezes had been ours. For, be it 


AN ocean TIUGEBY. 


170 , 

remembered, we were in a well-scoured ocean ; the winds even north 
of the “ rains ” and “ horse latitudes ” were in a sense to be reckoned 
on, with the trades beyond as steady in their way as the indication 
of a jammed dog-vane, and the “doldrums” to follow — the equinoc- 
tial belt of cat’s-paws and molten calms, where one sailor’s chance was 
another’s the wide world round. 

But so reasoned Finn, and I was not there to say him nay, yet it was 
difficult to hear him without a sort of mental shrug of the shoulders, 
though it was a talk to smooth down the raven plume of Wilfrid’s 
melancholy “ till it smiled.” My cousin managed very well without 
^his valet„protested indeed that he felt easier in his spirits since the 
fellow had gone forward, as though all unconsciously to himself he 
had long been depressed by the funeral face of the man. 

“Besides,” said he, in his simple, knowing way, with a quivering 
of the lids that put an expression of almost idiot cunning into the 
short, pathetic peering of his large, protruding eyes, “ he was with 
me when my wife left my home; he it was who came to tell me 
that Lady Monson was not to be found ; it w^as he, too, who put 
Hope-Kennedy’s letter into my hand, though it was picked up by 
one of the house-maids. These were thoughts that would float like 
a cloud of hellish smoke in my brain when he was hanging about 
me, and so I’m glad to have him out of my sight ; yes. I’m the better 
for his absence. And then,” he added, lowering his voice, “ his be- 
havior proves that he is not sound in his mind.” 

That Muffin was as well content with the arrangement as his mas- 
ter I cannot say. They kept him at work forward upon small, 
mean jobs, and he seldom came aft unless it was to lend a hand in- 
pulling upon a rope. Yet, after a little, I would see him in a dog- 
watch on the forecastle, with a huddle of seamen on the broad grin 
round him. One special evening I remember, when the watch had 
run out into the dusk, and it might have been within half an hour of 
eight bells, I arrived on deck from the dinner-table, and heard, as I 
supposed, a woman singing forward. The voice was a very good, 
clear soprano, with a quality in it that might have made you imag- 
ine a middle-aged lady was turning up. The song was “The Vale 
of Avoca.” The concertina accompaniment was fairly played. I 
listened with astonishment for some time, wondering whether Miss 
Jennings’s maid had gat among the men, and then called to Crimp. 

“ Who’s that singing?” said I. 

“ Him they’ve nicknamed the mute,” said he. 

“ What, Muffin ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


171 


“ Ay ! sounds as if he’d swallowed his sister, and she was calling out 
to be released.” 

There happened inside this particular week with which I am deal- 
ing an incident much too curious not to deserve a place here. All 
day long it had been blowing a fresh breeze from north-east, but as 
the sun sank the wind went with him, and about an hour before 
sunset there was a mild air breathing, with scarce weight enough in 
it to blow the scent off a milkmaid, as sailors say, though it was 
giving the yacht way, as you saw by the creep of the wrinkles at her 
stem, working out from the shadow of the yacht’s form in the water 
into lines that resembled burnished copper wire, in the red, western 
light. Miss Laura and Wilfrid were on deck, and I was leaning over 
the rail, with a pipe in my mouth, all sorts of easy, dreamy fancies 
slipping into me out of the drowsy passage of the water along; ide, 
with its wreath of foam-bells eddying, or some little cloudy seeth- 
ing of white striking from our wet and flashing side into a surface 
which hung so glass-like, with the crimson tinge in the atmosphere 
sifting down into it, that you fancied you could see a hundred 
fathoms deep. Presently, running my eyes ahead, I caught sight of 
some minute object three or four points away, on the weather bow, 
which every now and again would sparkle like the leap of a flhme 
from the barrel of a musket. I stepped to the companion, picked 
up the telescope, and made the thing out to be a bottle, the glass of 
which gave back the sunlight in fitful winkings to the twists and 
turns of it upon the ripples. 

“ What are you looking at ?” cried Wilfrid. 

“ A bottle,” I answered. 

“Ho!” he laughed, “ wh.at you sailors call a dead marine, ha? 
What sort of liquor will it have contained, I wonder, and how long 
has it been overboard ?” 

The glass I held was Captain Finn’s ; it was a very powerful in- 
strument, and the bottle came so close to me in the lenses that it was 
like examining it at arm’s-length. 

“ It is corked,” said I. 

“ Can we not pick it up ?” exclaimed Miss Jennings. 

“ Oh, but an empty bottle, my dear,” exclaimed Wilfrid, with a 
shrug. 

I examined it again. “ I tell you what, Wilfrid, that it is corked 
should signify there is something in it. Who troubles himself to 
plug an empty bottle when it is flung overboard, unless it is intended 
as a messenger?” 


1^2 


Ax\" OCKAN TRAGIIDY. 


He was instantly excited. “ Why, by all means, then — ” He broke 
off, looking around. The mate had charge ; he was sulkily pacing 
the deck to leeward, with a lift of his askew eye aloft, and then a 
stare over the rail, all as regular as the recurrence of rhymes in poe- 
try. “ Mr. Crimp !” called Wilfrid. The man came over to us. “Do 
you see that bottle 

Crimp shaded his eyes and took a steady view of the water tow- 
ards which my cousin pointed, and then said, “ Is thait there thing 
flashing a bottle ?” 

“ Yes, man ; yes.” 

“ Well, I see it right enough.” 

“Get it picked up, Mr. Crimp,” said Wilfrid. 

The mate walked aft. “ Down helium !” he exclaimed to the fel- 
low who was steering. The wheel was put over, and the bottle was 
brought almost directly in a line with the yacht. The top-gallant 
sail “ lifted,” but what air blew was abaft the beam, and the dis- 
tance was too short to render necessary the handling of the braces 
and sheets. Crimp went a little way forward and hailed the fore- 
castle, and presently a man stood ready at the gangway with a can- 
vas bucket slung at the end of a line. A very small matter will 
create a great deal of interest at sea. Had the approaching bottle 
been a mermaid, the group of sailors could not have observed it 
with livelier attention, nor awaited its arrival with brisker expecta- 
tions. Presently, splash ! the bottle was cleverly caught, hauled up, 
dried, and brought aft. 

“ It’s not been in the water long,” said I ; “ the wooden plug in 
the mouth looks fresh.” 

“ Mr. Crimp, sing out for a corkscrew,” cried Wilfrid. 

“ No good in that,” cried I ; “ break the thing ; that wdll be the 
speediest way to come at its contents.” 

I held the bottle to the sun a moment, but the glass was thick 
and black, and revealed nothing. I then knocked it against the rail ; 
the neck fell, and exposed a letter folded as you double a piece of 
paper to light your pipe with. I pulled it out and opened it ; Miss 
Laura peeped over one shoulder, Wilfrid over the other; his respira- 
tions swift, almost fierce. It was just the thing to put some wild 
notions about the Shark into his head. From the forecastle the 
sailors were staring with all their eyes. The paper was quite dry ; 
I opened it carefully, with an emotion of awe, for trifling as the in- 
cident was, apparently, yet to my fancy there was the mystery and 
the solemnity of the ocean in it, too. Indeed, you thought of it as 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


173 


having something of the wonder of a voice speaking from the blue 
air when your eye sought the liquid expanse out of whose vast heart 
the tiny missive had been drawn. It was a rude, hurried scrawl 
in lead-pencil, and ran thus: 

“ Brig ‘ Colossus' George Meadows^ Captain. Waterlogged jive 
days ; all hands but two dead ; fast breaking up. No fresh-water. 
Raw porky one cask. Who finds this, for God's sake, report!" 

The word September was added, but the writer had omitted the 
date — probably could not remember it after spelling the name of 
the month. I gave Crimp the note that he might take it forward 
and read it to the men, telling him to let me have it again. 

“ They will all have perished by this time, no doubt,” said Wilfrid, 
in his most raven-like note. 

“ Think of them with raw pork only ! The meat crystallized with 
salt; the hot sun over their heads; not a thimbleful of fresh-water; 
the vessel going to pieces plank by plank; the horrible anguish of 
thirst made maddening by the mockery of the cold fountain-like 
sounds of that brine there flowing in the hold, or washing along- 
side with a champagne-like seething ! Oh,” groaned I, “ who is that 
home-keeping bard who speaks of the ocean as the mother of all? 
The mother! A tigress. Why, if old Davy Jones be the devil. 
Jack is right in finding an abode for him down on the ooze there 1 
Mark how the affectionate mother of all torments its victims with 
a hellish refinement of cruelty before strangling them ; how, if the 
land be near enough, she will fling them ashore mutilated, eyeless, 
eaten, in horrible triumph and enjoyment of her work, that we shud- 
dering radishes may behold and understand her power.” 

“ Cease, for God’s sake 1” roared Wilfrid ; “ you’re talking a night- 
mare, man 1 Isn’t the plain fact enough ?” he cried, picking up the 
broken bottle and flinging it in a kind of rage overboard ; “ why 
garnish ?” 

“ I want to see the ocean properly interpreted,” I cried. “ Your 
poetical personifications are clap-trap. Great mother, indeed ! Great 
grandmother, Wilfrid. Mother of whales and sharks ; but when it 
comes to man — ” 

“ Oh, but this is impiety, Mr. Monson,” cried Miss Laura ; “ it is 
really dangerous to talk so. One may think — but here we are upon 
the sea, you know, and that person you spoke of just now” (point- 
ing down) “ might with his great ears — ” 

“ Now, Laura, my dear,” broke in W'ilfrid, “ can’t we pick up a 
wretched bottle and read the melancholy message it contains with- 


174 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


out falling ill of fancy ?” He went to the skylight : “ Steward, 
some seltzer and brandy here ! Your talk of that salt-pork,” he 
continued, coming back to us, “ makes my tongue cleave to the roof 
of my mouth. I would give much for a little ice, d’ye know. 
Heigho ! Big as this ocean is, I vow by the saints there’s not room 
enough in it for the misery there is in the world !” with which he 
set off pacing the deck, though he calmed down presently over a 
foaming glass ; but he showed so great a dislike to any reference 
to the bottle and its missive that, to humor him. Miss Jennings and 
I forbore all allusion to the incident. 

It was next forenoon, somewhere about the hour of eleven o’clock, 
that the lookout man on the top-gallant yard — whom I had noticed 
playing for some time the polished tubes, which glanced like fire 
in his lifted hands as he steadied the glass against the mast — sud- 
denly bawled down with a voice of excitement, “ Sail, ho !” 

Wilfrid, who was lounging on the skylight, jumped off it. I 
pricked up my ears ; Miss Laura hollowed her gloved hands ^o take 
a view of the man aloft. 

“ Where away ?” cried Finn. 

“ Right ahead, sir.” 

“ What do you make her out to be ?” 

The seaman levelled the telescope again ; then, swinging off from 
the yard by his grip of the tie, he sung out : “ She looks to be a 
wreck, sir. I don’t make out any canvas set.” 

“ She’ll be showing afore long, your honor,” said Finn, and he 
cast his eye upon the water to judge of our speed. 

All night long it had blown a weak wind, and the draught was 
still a mere fanning, with a hot sun, that made the shelter of the 
awning a necessary condition of life on deck by day ; a clear, soft, 
dark-blue sky westward, and in the east a broad shadowing of steam- 
like cloud, with a hint in the yellow tinge of it low down upon the 
sea of the copper sands of Africa, roasting noons and shivering mid- 
nights, fever and cockroaches, and stifling cabins ; so that, merely 
wrinkling through it, as it were, it was not until we had eaten our 
lunch, bringing the hour to about a quarter before two o’clock, that 
the vessel sighted from aloft in the morning had risen above the 
rim of the ocean within reach of a glass directed at her over the 
quarter-deck rail. 

“ It will be strange,” said I, putting down the telescope, after a 
long stare at her, “ if yonder craft don’t prove the Colossus, Look 
^t her, Wilfrid; a completer wreck never was.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


175 


He seized the glass. “ By George, then,” he cried, “ if that’s so, 
the two men that paper spoke of may be still alive. I hope so, I 
hope so. We owe Heaven a life, and it is a glorious thing to succor 
the perishing.” His hand shook with excitement as he directed the 
glass at the vessel. 

Points of her stole out as we approached. She had apparently 
been a brig. Both masts were gone flush with the deck ; bowsprit 
too ; channels torn from their strong fastenings, and whole lengths 
of bulwark smashed level. I supposed her cargo to have been tim- 
ber, but her decks showed bare, whence I gathered that she was 
floating on some other sort of light cargo — oil, cork — no telling 
what, indeed. She swayed wearily upon the long ocean-heave with 
a sulky, sickly dip from side to side, as though she rocked herself 
in her pain. There was a yard, or spar, in the water alongside of 
her, the rigging of which had hitched itself in some way about the 
rail, so that to every lurch on one side the boom rose half its length, 
with a flash of the sun off the wet end of it ; and this went on reg- 
ularly, till, after watching it a bit, I turned my eyes away with a 
shudder, feeling in a sense of creeping that possessed me for an 
instant, the sort of craziness that would come into a dying brain 
aboard the craft, to the horrible maddening monotony of the rise 
and fall of that spar. 

“ Such a picture as that,” whispered Miss Jennings softly in my 
ear, “ realizes your idea of the ocean as a tigress. What but claws 
could have torn her so ? And that soft caressing of the water — is it 
not the velvet paw stroking the dead prey ?” 

“ There’s a man on board !” cried W’'ilfrid, wildly ; “ look, Charles.” 

He thrust the glass into my hand while he pointed with a vehe- 
ment gesture. I had missed him before, but the broadside open- 
ing of the wreck to our approach disclosed his flgure as he sat 
with folded arms and his chin on his breast in a sleeping posture 
against the companion, that remained intact, though the wheel, 
skylight, and all other deck fixtures that one could think of were 
gone. I eyed him steadily through the lenses, but though he 
never raised his head nor stirred his arms, which lay folded, yet 
owing to the roll of the hulk it was impossible to say that his 
body did not move. 

“ There’s the word Colossus'"* said I, “ painted plainly enough 
upon her bow. Yonder may be the writer of the letter received. 
Wilf, you should send a boat. He may be alive — God knows’ 
But though he be dead there might be another living.” 


176 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Finn,” cried Wilfrid, “ bring the yacht to a stand and board 
that wreck instantly, d’ye hear ?” 

“ Ay, ay, sir !” 

“ I’ll make one of the boat’s crew, with your good leave, captain,” 
I sung out. 

“ Take charge by all means, Charles,” said Wilfrid. 

“ With pleasure,” said I. “ See two things in the boat, Finn, be- 
fore we start — fresh-water-and a drop of brandy or rum.” 

The yacht’s top-sail was backed, the helm put down, and the ves- 
sel’s way arrested. We came to a halt within half a mile of the 
wreck. The ocean swung smoothly in wide-browed folds that went 
brimming to the hulk in rounds polished enough at times to catch 
the image of her till she showed as she leaned from us with her re- 
flection leaning, too, as if she had broken in halves and was found- 
ering. The boat was lowered and brought to the gangway ; I 
jumped in and we shoved off. Five fellows pulled, and on a sudden 
I had to turn my head away to smother a laugh, while I seemed to 
wave a farewell to Wilfrid and Miss Laura, on noting that one of 
the rowers was no less a man than Muffin. Whether he had thrust 
himself into this errand through some thirst for any momentary 
change in the discipline of his shipboard life, or whether Finn had 
remembered that the fellow talked much of being able to feather an 
oar, and had ordered him into the boat, I cannot tell, but there he 
was, as solemn as a sleeping ape, his old straw hat pulled down to 
his nose, and his eyes steadfastly fixed upon the oar that he plied. 
He pulled well enough, but his anxiety to keep time and to feather 
besides was exceedingly absurd, and it cost me no small effort to 
master my face, though the struggle to look grave and ignorant of 
his presence was mightily helped in a minute by the sight of the 
silent figure seated upon the wreck’s deck. 

I earnestly overhauled with my eyes the wallowing fabric as we 
approached her; but saving that lonely man motionless in his posture 
of slumber, there was nothing to be distinguished outside the melan- 
choly raffle of unrove rigging and ropes’ ends in the bow, vast rents 
in the planks of the deck, splinters of bulwark, stanchion, and the 
like. The fellow that pulled stroke was the big-whiskered man that 
acted as boatswain, named Cutbill. I said to him as he came 
stooping towards me for the sweep of his oar, “ She’s so jagged the 
whole length of her broadside that I believe her stern, low as it lies, 
will be the easiest and safest road to enter by.” 

He looked over his shoulder, and said ; “ Ay, sir, But there.is no 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


177 


need for you to trouble to step aboard. I’ll overhaul her if you 
like, sir.” 

“ No, I’ll enter her. It’s a break, Mr. Cutbill. But you will ac- 
company me, for I may want help.” 

He shook his head. “You’ll find nothing living there, sir.” 

“ No telling till we’ve found out, anyway,” said I. “ Oars !” I 
sung out. 

We floated under the wreck’s counter, hooked on, and waiting 
for the lift of the swell, I very easily sprang from the boat’s gun- 
wale to the taffrail of the hulk, followed by Cutbill. The decks had 
blown up, and the sort of drowning rolling of the hulk rendered 
walking exceedingly dangerous. The water showed black through 
the splintered chasms, with a dusky gleam in the swaying of it like 
window-glass on a dark night; and there was a strange noise of 
sobbing that was desperately startling, with its commingling of 
sounds like human groans, and hollow frog-like croakings, followed 
by blows against the interior caused by floating cargo driven against 
the side, as if the hull was full of half-strangled giants struggling to 
pound their way out of her. 

From the first great gap I looked down through, I remember re- 
coiling, with a wildness that might easily have rolled me overboard, 
to the sight of a bloated human face, with long hair streaming, 
floating on the surface of the water athwart the ragged orifice. It 
was like putting one’s eye to a camera-obscura and witnessing a 
sickening phantom of death, saving that here the horror was real, 
with the weeping noises in the hold to help it, and the great encom- 
passing sea to sweep it into one’s very soul as a memory to ride 
one’s sleepless hours hag-like for a long term. 

We approached the figure of the man. He was seated on a 
three-legged stool, with his back resting against the companion. I 
stooped to look at his face. 

“Famine is the artist here!” I cried instantly, springing erect. 
“My God! what incomparable anguish is there in that expres- 
sion !” 

“ See, sir,” cried the burly sailor by my side, in a broken voice, 
and he pointed to a piece of leather that lay close beside the body. 
One end of it had been gnawed into pulp, which had hardened into 
iron again to the air and the sun. 

“Yes, the letter we picked up,” said I, “stated there was a cask 
of raw meat on board.” 

“ That was chewed for thirst, sir — for thirst, sir !” ej^claimed th^ 

12 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


lYS 

seaman. “ I suffered once, and bit upon a lump of lead to keep the 
saliva a-running.” 

“ Best not linger,” said I. “ Take a look forward, will you ?” 

He went towards the forecastle; I peered down the little compan- 
ion-way ; it was as black as the inside of a well, with the water 
washing up the steps within reach of my arm. There could be 
nothing living down there, nor indeed in any other part of the 
wreck if not on deck, for she was full of water. The men in the 
boat astern were standing up in her, with their heads bobbing to- 
gether over the line of the taffrail, to get a view of the figure, for it 
was seated on the starboard side, plain in their sight, all being clear 
to the companion ; yet spite of that lump of whiskered, mahogany 
faces, with Muffin’s yellow chops in the heart of it to make the 
whole group as commonplace as a sentence of his, never in all my 
time did so profound a sense of desolation and loneliness possess 
me as I stood bringing my eyes from the huge steeping plain of the 
sea to that human shape, with its folded arms and its bowed head. 
Heavens, thought I, what scenes of human anguish have the ocean stars 
looked down upon ! The flash past of the ghastly face in the hold be- 
neath — that bit of gnawed leather, which even had you thought of a 
dog coming to such a thing would have made your heai;^t sick — the 
famine in that bowed face where yet lay so fierce a twist of torment 
that the grin of it made the slumberous attitude a horrible sarcasm — 

“ Nothing to be seen, sir,” exclaimed. Cutbill, picking his way aft 
with the merchantman’s clumsy rolling step. 

I went in a hurry to the taffrail and dropped into the boat, he 
followed, and the fellow in the bow shoved off. Scarce, however, 
had the men dropped their oars into the rowlocks, each fellow 
drawing in his breath for the first stretch back, when a voice hailed 
us from the deck : 

'‘'‘For GoFs sake don't leave me !" 

“ Oh !” shrieked Muffin, springing to his feet and letting his oar 
slide overboard ; “ there’s some one alive on board !” 

“ Sit, you lubber !” thundered the fellow behind him, fetching him 
a clip on the shoulder that brought him in a crash to his haras, while 
the man abaft picked up the oar. 

Every face wore an expression of consternation. Cutbill’s, that 
looked like a walnut-shell between his whiskers, turned of an ashen 
hue ; he had stretched forth his arms to give the oar its first swing, 
and now they forked out, paralyzed into the stiffness of marline- 
spikes by astonishmeut, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


179 


“Smite my eyes,” he muttered, as though whispering to himself, 
“ if it ain’t the first dead man’s voice I ever heard !” 

“Back water!” I cried out, for the swell had sheered the boat so 
as to put the companion-way between us and the figure. I stood up 
and looked. The man was seated as before, though spite of the sure 
and dreadful expression of death his famine-white face bore, spite 
of ray being certain in my own mind that he was as dead as the 
creature whose face had glimmered out upon the black water in the 
hold, yet the cry to us had been so unmistakably real, had come so 
unequivocally, not indeed only from the wreck, but from the very 
part of the hulk on which the corpse was seated, and I found my- 
self staring at him as though I expected that he would look around 
at us. 

“ There’s no one alive yonder, men,” said I, seating myself afresh. 

“ What was it that spoke, think ’ee, sir ?” exclaimed the man in 
the bow, bringing his eyes full of awe away from the sheer hulk to 
ray face. 

“ Mr. Monson, sir, I ’urably beg pardon,” exclaimed Muffin, in the 
greasy, deferential tone he was used to employ when in the cabin, 
“ but there must be something living on board that ship, unless it 
were a sperrjt.” ' 

“ A spirit, you fool !” cried I, in a passion, “ what d’ye mean by 
such talk? There’s nothing living on that wreck, I tell you. Jump 
aboard any one of you who doubts me and he can judge for him- 
self.” 

Muffin shook his head ; the other men writhed uneasily on the 
thwarts of the boat. 

“ Cutbill and I overhauled the vessel ; she’s full of water. What 
is on her deck you can see for yourselves, and nothing but a fish 
could live below. Isn’t that right, Cutbill ?” 

“Ay, sir,” he answered; and then, under his breath, “But what 
voice was it that hailed us, then ?” 

“ Come, give way 1” I cried, “ they’ll be growing impatient aboard 
the yacht.” 

The oars dipped, feathered, flashed, and in an instant the blue 
sides of the smart and sparkling little craft were buzzing and spin- 
ning through the foam. It was like coming from a graveyard to 
the sight of some glittering, cheerful, tender, poetic pageant to carry 
the eye from the hull to the yacht. She seemed clad by the con- 
trast with new qualities of beauty. You found the completest ex- 
pression of girlish archness in the courtesying of her shapely bows, 


180 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


with a light at her fore-foot like a smile on the lip when she lifted 
her yellow sheathing there, pouting, as one might say, from the ca- 
ressing kiss of the blue brine, to gleam like gold for a moment to 
the sunlight. We swept alongside and I sprang on board. 

“The poor creature is dead, I suppose?” exclaimed Wilfrid, in- 
specting the wreck through a binocular glass. 

“Yes,” I answered, “ dead as dead can be; too dead to handle, 
faith. I might have sought in his pockets for some hints to found 
a report upon, but his face had the menace of a fierce whisper.” 

“It seems cruel to leave him unburied,” said Miss Laura, with her 
soft eyes full of pity, and the emotions begotten of the presence of 
death. 

“ That hulk must soon go to pieces,” said I, “ and then she will 
give him a sailor’s funeral.” 

“ When Nature acts the part of high priestess, if there be such a 
part,” exclaimed Wilfrid, in a low, tremulous voice, not without a 
kind of sweetness in its way, thanks, perhaps, to the mood of ten- 
der sentiment that was upon him, “ how grandly she celebrates the 
humblest sailor’s obsequies ! How noble is her cathedral ! Observe 
the altitude of that stupendous roof of blue. How sublime are the 
symphonies of the wind ; how magnificent the organ notes which 
they send pealing through this great echoing fabric ! Nature will 
give yonder poor fellow a nobler funeral than it is in our power to 
honor him with. But, Charles,” he cried, with a sudden change of 
voice, and, indeed, with a new manner in him, “ have you ever re- 
marked the exquisite felicity with which Nature invents and fits and 
works her puppetshows? Take yonder scene at which we have 
been suffered to steal a peep. What could be more choicely im- 
agined than that a dead man should have charge of such a dead 
ship as that, and that the lookout he is keeping upon her deck 
should be as black as the future of the vessel he still seems to 
command ?” 

“ Well, well,” said I, “all this may be as you put it, Wilf. But 
all the same, I am glad to see that top-sail yard swmng and that 
spectre there veering astern. I protest my visit has made me feel 
as though I must lie down for a bit and, in sober truth, the body 
I had inspected, coupled with the thrill of amazement that had shot 
through me to the voice we had heard, had proved a trifle too much 
for my nerves, topped, as it all was, with certain superstitious stir- 
rings, the crawling, as it might be, upon the memory of that ghostly, 
insoluble hail, along with the workings of an imagination that was 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


181 


too active for happiness when anything approaching to a downright 
horror fell in its way. So I went below and lay upon a sofa, but 
had scarcely hoisted my legs when Wilfrid arrived, bawling to the 
steward for a bottle of champagne, and immediately after came 
Miss Jennings, who must needs fetch me a pillow, and then, as 
though she had a mind to make me feel ridiculous, saturate a 
pocket-handkerchief with eau-de-cologne, all which attentions I 
hardly knew whether to like or not till, having swallowed a bumper 
of champagne, I hopped off the couch with a laugh. 

“ A pretty sailor I am, eh, Wilfrid ?” cried I ; “ a likely sort of 
figure to take command of the Channel Fleet ! Miss Jennings, your 
eau-de-cologne has entirely cured me.” 

“What’s to be the next incident now — the Shark exclaimed 
Wilfrid. He thrust his hands deep into his trousers-pocket, and 
marched into his cabin, head hanging down. 


182 


AN OCEAN TKAGEDi:. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

WE SIGHT A SCHOONER-YACHT. 

I HAPPENED to be alone on deck after dinner, having left Wilfrid 
at his diary and Miss Jennings in her cabin, where she had gone to 
make ready to join me, as she had said. The wreck had faded out 
before sundown, melting upon the flashing purple under the sinking 
luminary like the memory of a nightmare off a mind upon which is 
streaming a light of cheerfulness. The night was clear but dark, 
with a pleasant wind, through whose dryness the stars looked down 
purely. The yacht was sailing a fair six knots, as I gathered when 
I stepped from the companion to the lee rail, and peered over in a 
wool-gathering way at the emerald gushings and eddyings of the 
phosphoric flres which winked in the cloudy paleness along the 
bends, and fled into the dimness of glowworms to the spectral ra- 
cing of our wake. 

I was worried and oppressed by a sort of heaviness of spirit. I 
had acted a cheerful part at dinner, but there was little of my heart 
in the tongue I wagged. The recollection of the motionless figure 
seated upon the wreck, and, darker yet, the memory of that bloated, 
long-haired, phantom face sliding in the space of a breath across 
the gap in the shattered deck, with the sobbing wash of the black 
water on which it floated to put a dreadful meaning of its own into 
the livid, nimble vision, went for something — nay, went for a good 
deal, no doubt ; but it was the hail that had come from the wreck 
which mainly occasioned my perplexity and agitation, and, I may 
add, my depression. Twice now had syllables, sounding from w’here 
there were no lips to pronounce them, reached my ears. Had I 
alone heard them I should have been alarmed for my reason, not 
doubting an hallucination, though never for an instant believing in 
the reality of the utterance ; but the voices had been audible to 
others, they were consequently real, and for that reason oppressive 
to reflect upon. The shadow of Wilfrid’s craziness lay on his ship ; 
the voyage was begun in darkness, and was an aimless excursion, as 
I thought, with no more reasonable motive for it than such as was 
to be found in the contending passions of a bleeding heart. Hence 


AN OCEAN TEaGEOY. 


183 


it was inevitable that any gloomy incident which occurred during 
such an adventure as this should gather in the eye of the imagina- 
tion a very much darker tincture than the complexion it would carry 
under sunnier and more commonplace conditions of an ocean run. 

While I lay over the rail lost in thought I was accosted by Finn. 

“ Beg pardon, Mr. Monson ; couldn’t make sure in this here gloom 
whether it was you or Sir Wilfrid. May I speak a word with ’ee, 
sir ?” 

“ Certainly, Finn.” 

Well, now, sir, if that there old Jacob Crimp ain’t gone and 
took on so joyful a frame of mind that I’m a land-crab if his sper- 
rits ain’t downright alarming in a man whose weins runs lime juice.” 

“ Old Crimp !” cried I ; “ what’s the matter with him ?” 

“ Why, he comes up to me and says, ‘ Capt’n,’ he says, ‘ there’s 
Joe Cutbill, Jemmy Smithers, that funeral chap Muffin, and the 
others who was in the boat which went to the wreck this after- 
noon, all swearing that they heard a voice in the air,’ and so saying, 
he burst out a-laughing like a parrot. ‘ A woice !’ says he. ‘ So me 
and Mr. Monson aren’t the only ones, d’ye see ? Damme,’ says he, 
‘ if it don’t do my heart good to think on’t. There’s the whole 
bloomin’ boiling of us now,’ says he, ‘ to laugh at, capt’n ; not Jacob 
Crimp only,’ and here he bursts into another laugh.” 

“ What does the old chap want to convey ?” said I. 

“ Why, sir, joyfulness as that he no longer stands alone as having 
heard a woice; for though, to be sure, you was with him that night, 
and some sound like to a cuss rose up oflE yon quarter, he feels like 
being alone in the hearing of it ; for, ye see, a man in his position 
can’t comfortably hitch on to a gent like you, and it was the harder 
for him for that the man at the wheel swore that he never heard 
the cry.” 

“ He is superstitious, like most old lob-scousers, no doubt,” said I. 
“ Have the others been talking about this mysterious hail from the 
wreck ?” 

Ay, sir ; ’tis a pity. It’s raised an oneasiness ’mong the men. 
There’s that Irish fool O’Connor, him that foundered the Dago, go- 
ing about with a face as long as a wet hammock, and swearing that 
’tain’t lucky.” 

“ I don’t know about its being unlucky,” said I, “ but it certainly 
is most confoundedly curious. Captain Finn.” 

I saw him peering hard at me in the dusk. “But surely your 
honor’s not going to tell me there was a woice ?” said he. 


184 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ As we were shoving off,” said I, “ we were hailed in G.od’s nanu' 
to return. Every man of us in the boat heard it. There were but 
two bodies in the wreck, as stone-dead as if they had died before 
the days of the flood. What say you to that^ Captain Finn ?” 

He pulled off his hat to scratch his head. After a pause, he ex- 
claimed, slowly : “ Well, I’m fer leaving alone what isn’t to be onder- 
stood. There were ghosts maybe afore I was born, but none since; 
and the dead h’an’t talked, to my knowledge, since New Testament 
times. Old Jamaicy rum isn’t to be had by dropping a bucket over 
the side, and if a truth lies too deep to be fished up by creeps, bet- 
ter drop it, says I, and fix the attention on something else.” 

“ You tell me the men are uneasy ?” 

“ Ay, sir.” 

“ Do you mean all hands ?” 

“ Well, your honor knows what sailors are. When they’re housed 
together under one deck they’re like a box of them patent lucifer- 
lights — if one catches, the whole mass is aflame.” 

“ It’s a passing fit of superstition,” said I. “ Give it time. Best 
say nothing about it to Sir Wilfrid.” 

“Bless us, no, sir. Sorry it’s raised so much satisfaction in that 
there old Jacob, though. A laugh in Jacob don’t sound natural. 
Any sort o’ joyfulness in such a constitution is agin nature.” 

At this point Miss Jennings arrived on deck, and Finn, with a 
shadowy fist moving at his brow, stepped to the opposite rail, where 
his figure was easily distinguished by the stars he blotted out. 

“ I hope your spirits are better,” said Miss Laura. 

“I should be glad to turn the silent sailor of that wreck out of 
my memory ; but my spirits are very well.” 

“ Wilfrid noticed your depression at table, but he attributed it 
entirely to the dreadful sight you witnessed on the wreck.” She 
passed her hand through my arm with a soft impulse that started 
me into a walk, but there was so much real unconsciousness in her 
way of doing this — a child-like intimation of her wish to talk with- 
out proposing it, and so breaking the flow of our speech at the mo- 
ment — that for some little while I was scarce sensible I held her arm 
and that I was pacing with her. “ But I think there is more the 
matter with you, Mr. Monson,” she continued, with her face glimmer- 
ing like pearl in the dusk, as she looked up at,me,“than meets the 
ear — I will not say the eye.” 

“ The fact is. Miss Jennings,” said I, abruptly, “ I am bothered.” 

“By what?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


185 


“Well, what think you of the suspicion which grows in me that 
this yacht carries along with her, in the atmosphere that enfolds her, 
some sort of Ariel, whose mission is to bewilder, out of its invisibili- 
ty, the sober senses of men of plain practical judgment, like your 
humble servant?” 

“ You want to frighten me by pretending that you are falling a 
little crazy.” 

“No !” 

“ Or you are creating an excuse to return home.” 

“ No again. How can I return home ?” 

“ Why, by the first convenient ship we happen to sight and speak. 
Is this some stratagem to prepare Wilfrid’s mind for your bidding 
us farewell when the chance happens ?” 

She spoke with a subdued note and a tremble of fretfulness in it. 

“ Suffer me to justify myself,” said I, and with that I led her to 
the captain, who stood, with folded arms, leaning against the rail 
near the main-rigging. “ Finn !” He dropped his hands and stood 
bolt-upright. “ Be so good as to tell Miss Jennings what the men 
are talking about forward.” 

“You mean the woice, sir?” 

“ What the men are talking about,” said I. 

“ Well, miss,” said Finn, “ as the boat that Mr. Monson had charge 
of this afternoon was a-leaving the wreck, the men heard themselves 
hailed by a woice that begged ’em in God’s name not to leave the 
party as called behind. Mr. Monson, sir, you heard it likewise.” 

“ I did,” I answered. 

“Another mystery,” exclaimed Miss Laura, “quite as dismal and 
astonishing as Muffin’s phosphoric warning.” 

“ Thanks, Finn ; that’s all I wanted to ask you,” said I, and we 
left hiiiT to resume our walk. 

“ Tell me about this voice,” said the girl. 

I did so, putting plenty of color into the picture, too, for I want- 
ed her to sympathize with my superstitious mood, while up to now 
there was nothing but incredulity and a kind of coquettish pique in 
her voice and manner. 

“ And you are afraid of this voice, Mr. Monson ? I wonder at 
you !” 

“ You should have my full consent to wonder,” said I, “ if it were 
the first time ; but there was the other night, you know, with solid, 
sour, uncompromising old Crimp to bear me witness, and now again 
to-day, with a boatful of men for evidence.” 


186 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“Really, Mr. Monson, what do you want to make yourself be- 
lieve ?” she asked, with a tone like a half laugh in her speech ; “ the 
dead cannot speak.” 

“ So ’tis said,” I grumbled, sucking hard at my cigar to kindle it 
afresh. 

“ Human syllables cannot be delivered save by human lips. What, 
then, could have spoken out of the darkness of the sea the other 
night ?” 

“Does not Milton tell of airy tongues that syllable men’s names?” 
said’ I, gloomily. 

“ Mr. Monson, I repeat that I wonder at you. How can you suf- 
fer your imagination to be cheated by some trick of the senses ?” she 
laughed. “Pray, be careful. You may influence me. Then what 
a morbid company shall we make ! I am sure you would like me to 
believe in this mysterious voice of yours ; but, happily, we Colonials 
are too young as a people to be superstitious. We must wait for 
our ruined castles, and our moated granges, and our long, echoing, 
tapestry-lined corridors. Then, like you English, we may tremble 
when we hear a mysterious voice.” 

She started violently as she said this, giving my arm so smart a 
pull that it instantly brought me to a halt, while in a voice of genu- 
ine alarm she exclaimed, “ Good gracious ! what is that ?” 

Her face was turned up towards the weather yard-arm of the 
square top-sail, where, apparently floating a little above the studding- 
sail boom iron, like to a flame in the act of running down the smoke 
of an extinguished candle ere firing the wick, shone a pendulous bub- 
ble of greenish fire, but of a luminosity sufficiently powerful to dis- 
tinctly reveal the extremity of the black spar pointing finger-like into 
the darkness ahead, while a large space of the curve of the top-gal- 
lant sail above showed in the lustre with something of the glassy, 
delicate greenness you observe in a midsummer leaf in moonshine. 
The darkness, with its burden of stars, seemed to press to the yacht 
the deeper for that mystic light, and much that had been distinguish- 
able outlines before melted out upon the sight. 

“What is it?” exclaimed Miss Jennings, in a voice of consterna- 
tion, and I felt her hand tighten upon my arm, with her fears thrill- 
ing through the involuntary pressure. 

“ Figure an echoing corridor hung with aged tapestry stirring to 
cold draughts, which seem to come like blasts from a graveyard, a 
noise as of the distant clanking of chains, and then the apparition of 
a man in armor holding up such a lantern as that yonder, approach- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 187 

ing you who are spellbound and cannot move for horror.’^ I burst 
out laughing. 

“ What is that light, Mr. Monson she cried, petulantly. 

“ Why, Miss Jennings,” I answered, “ ’tis a saint, not a light ; a 
reverend old chap called St. Elmo, who transforms himself at pleasure 
into a species of snap-dragon for the encouragement of poor Jack.” 

“See that corposant, sir?” rumbled Finn, out of the darkness. 

“Very well indeed,” I answered. “Finn has explained,” I con- 
tinued; “that light is what sailors call a corpusant — sometimes 
compreesant. If we were Catholics of the Columbian period we 
should tumble down upon our knees and favor it with a litany or 
oblige it with a hymn ; but being bleak-minded Protestants, all that 
we can do is to wonder how the deuce it happens to be burning on 
such a night as this, for I have seen scores of these corposants in my 
time, but always either in dead calms or in gales of wind. But there 
it is. Miss Jennings — an atmospheric exhalation as commonplace as 
lightning, harmless as the glowworm, though in its way one of the 
most poetic of old Ocean’s hundred suggestions; for how easy to 
imagine some giant figure holding that mystic lamp, whose irradia- 
tion blends the vast spirit shape with the gloom and blinds the sight 
to it, though by watching with a little loving coaxing of fancy one 
should be able after a bit to catch a glimpse of a pair of large, sor- 
rowful eyes, or the outline of some wan, giant face.” 

“ It is gone,” she exclaimed, with a shudder. 

“ Hush !” I exclaimed ; “ we may hear the rustling of pinions by 
listening.” 

“ Mr. Monson, you are ungenerous,” she cried, with a hysterical 
laugh. 

Suddenly the light glanced and then flamed at the foretop-mast 
head, where it threw out, though very palely, the form of the look- 
out man on the top-gallant yard, whose posture showed him to be 
crouching with his arm over his eyes. 

“ I dare say that poor devil up there,” I exclaimed, “ fully be- 
lieves the fire-bubble to be a man’s ghost.” 

“ It is a startling thing to see,” exclaimed Miss Jennings. 

“ But Colonials are too young as a people to be superstitious,” 
said I. “It is only we of the old country, you know, with our 
moated granges — ” 

“ What is the hour, Mr. Monson ?” 

“ I say, Charles, are you on deck ?” shouted Wilfrid, from the 
companion-hatch. 


188 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“Ay; here I am with Miss Jennings. What’s the time, Wilfrid, 
d’ye know ?” 

As I spoke two silver chimes, and then a third, came floating from 
the forecastle — three bells — half-past nine. 

“See that corposant?” bawled Wilfrid. And he came groping 
up to us. “An omen, by George !” he cried, with an odd hilarious 
note in his voice. “Laura, mark me, that flame isn’t shining for 
nothing. ’Tis a signal-light fired by Fortune to advise us of some 
great event at hand.” 

“ Quarter-deck there !” came down the voice of the lookout man, 
falling from sail to sail, as it seemed, in an echo that made the mys- 
terious flame a wild thing to the imagination for a moment by its 
coming direct from it. 

“ Holloa !” roared Finn. 

“ Can I lay down till this here blasted light’s burned out ? ’Tain’t 
right to be all alone with it up here.” 

“ It is burned out,” cried Finn, in a way which showed he sym- 
pathized with the fellow. In fact, as the sailor called the light van- 
ished, and though we stood looking a while, waiting for its reap- 
pearance, we saw no more of it. 

The ocean corpse-candle had shone at the right moment. Likely 
enough I should have made myself a bit merry over my tender and 
beautiful companion’s fears in revenge for her pouting, pettish won- 
derment at the uneasiness which the mysterious voices had raised in 
me. But Wilfrid remained with us for the rest of the evening, and 
as I was anxious that he should know nothing about this strange 
sound, I forebore all raillery. It was midnight when we went to 
bed. Our talk had been very sober, indeed somewhat philosophi- 
cal in its way, with its references to electrical phenomena. Wil- 
frid chatted with excitement, which he increased by two or three 
fuming glasses of seltzer and spirits. He told us a wild story of a 
ship that he was on board of somewhere down off the New Zealand 
coast, ploughing through an ocean of fire on a pitch-black night, 
with a gale of wind blowing and a school of whales keeping pace 
with the rushing fabric, spouting vast feather-like fountains of burn- 
ing water as they stormed through it. He talked like a man recit- 
ing a dream or delivering an imagination, and there was a passion 
in his speech due to excitement and old cognac, along with a glow 
in his large peering eyes, and a play of flushed features that per- 
suaded me of a very defined mood of craziness passing over his 
mind. His fancy seemed to riot in the roaring, fiery scene he fig- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


189 


ured ; the ship plunging into hollows, which flashed about her bows 
like volcanic vomitings of flame, the heavens above black as soot, 
the ocean waving like sheet-lightning to its conflnes, and the huge 
body of whales crushing the towering surges as they rolled head- 
long through them into a moon -like brilliance, flinging on high 
their delicate emerald-green sparkling spouts of water, which floated 
comet-like over them against the midnight of the heavens. 

On eight bells striking we went to bed. All was quiet on deck ; 
a pleasant breeze blowing under the hovering prisms and crystals of 
the firmament, the yacht leaning over in a pale shadow in the dusk 
and seething pleasantly along, with a noise rising up from round 
about her like the rippling of a flag in a summer breeze. I fell asleep 
and slept soundly, and when I awoke it was to the beating of some- 
body’s knuckle upon my cabin door. The day had broken, and my 
first glance going to the scuttle, I spied through the thick glass of 
it a windy sunrise with smoky crimson flakes, and a tint of tarnished 
pink upon the atmosphere. 

“ Holloa ! holloa there ! Who’s that knocking?” 

“ ’Tis me, sir, Capt’n Finn. Can I have a word with your honor?” 
exclaimed the skipper, who had subdued his voice to a note that was 
alarming with its suggestion of physical effort. 

“ Come in, Finn. What is it now ?” 

The handle was turned, and the captain entered cap in hand. He 
closed the door carefully, and instantly said, “ Sorry to disturb you, 
sir, but baste me for an old duckling, Mr. Monson, if I don’t believe 
the Shark to be in sight.” 

'"^Whatr I shouted, sitting bolt -upright, and flinging my legs 
over the edge of the bunk. 

He glanced at the door, looking an intimation to me to make no 
noise. “ I thought I’d consult with ’ee first, sir, before reporting to 
Sir Wilfrid.” 

“ Is she in sight from the deck ?” 

“No, sir.” 

“ Have you seen her ?” 

“ Ay, Mr. Monson, I’m just off the t’gallant yard, where I’ve been 
inspecting her ever since she was first reported, and that’ll be draw- 
ing on for five and twenty minutes.” 

“But she is hull down.” 

“ Yes, sir, and still a schooner-yacht at that,” said he, emj)hatical- 
ly, “ Mind, I don’t say she is the Shark. All I want to report 
is a schooner, with a yacht’s canvas — pot American cotton. No, 


190 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


sir, canvas like ourn — nothin’ square forrards, and sailing well she 
looks.” 

“ How heading ?” 

“ Why to the south’ard and west’ard, as we are. I’m in your 
hands, sir. It’ll be a fearful excitement for Sir Wilfrid and a terrible 
blow if it’s another vessel.” 

“ Oh, but you’ll have to give him the news, happen what will ! 
Wait, however, till I have had a look, will you ? I shall be with you 
in a minute or two.” 

He left the berth, and in red-hot haste, and with a heart beating 
with excitement, I plunged into my clothes and ran on deck, passing 
softly, however, through the cabin ; for though I know not why it 
should be, yet I have observed that at sea there is something almost 
electrical in a time full of startling significance like this, an influence 
that, act as softly and be as hushed as you may, will yet arouse 
sleeping people and bring them about you in a dreaming way, won- 
dering what on earth has happened. Pale and windy as the sunrise 
was, there was dazzle enough in the soaring luminary to stagger my 
sight on my first emergence. I stepped clear of the companion, 
and stood while I fetched a few breaths, gazing round me. The sea 
was a dull freckled blue, with a struggling swell underrunning it 
athwart the course of the wind, as though the coming breeze was to 
be sought northward. The horizon astern was gloomy and vague 
in the shadow of a long bank of clouds, a heap of sullen terraces of 
vapor rising from flint to saffron and then to a faint wet rose where 
the ragged sky-line of the compacted body caught the eastern color. 
All was clear water, turn where the gaze would. On the top-gallant 
yard the fellow on the lookout lay over the spar with a telescope at 
his eye ; his flgure, as it swung through the misty radiance against 
the pale blue of the morning sky, that south-east looked to be kind- 
ling into whiteness, was motionless with the intentness of his stare. 
If what the tubes were revealing to him was the Shark, then, as he 
had been the first to sight her, that glittering heavy five-guinea 
piece nailed to the main-mast was his. It was as much the thought 
of this reward going from them as curiosity that had sent the watch 
on deck aloft, too, to have a look. The last of them was coming 
down hand over hand as I went forward. Discipline was forgotten 
in the excitement of such a moment as this, and swabs and squill- 
gees had been flung down without a word of rebuke from Cutbill, 
whose business it was to superintend the washing of the decks. 

I sprang into the foreshrouds and was presently alongside the 


AN OCEAN TKAGEDY. 


191 


lookout fellow. “Give me hold of that glass,” said 1. To the 
naked eye up here the sail hung transparently visible upon the 
edge of the sea, a point of lustrous white, like the head of a marble 
obelisk, lustrous with the silver of sunrise. But the telescope made 
a deal more of that dash of light than this. I threw a leg over the 
yard, steadied the glass against the mast, and instantly saw the white 
canvas of what seemed a large schooner-yacht risen to her rail upon 
the horizon, where the thin black length of her swam like an eel 
with the fluctuations of the refractive atmosphere ; but all above 
was the brilliant whiteness of the cloths of the pleasure ship mount- 
ing from boom to gaff ; a wide and handsome spread, with a flight 
of triangular canvas hovering between jib-boom and top-mast as 
though a flock of sea-fowl were winging past just there. 

“Do you know the Shark?'’' said I to the man. 

“I’ve seen her once or twice at Southampton, sir.” 

“ Is that she, think you ?” 

“ Ay, sartin as that there water’s salt.” 

“ Well, there’ll be good pickings for you on the main-mast,” said 
I, handing him back the glass. 

His face seemed to wither up between his whiskers to the incred- 
ible wrinkles of the smile which shrunk it to the aspect of an old 
dried apple. I got into the rigging and descended to the deck. 
The sailors stared hard at me as I went aft. I suppose they imagined 
that I was well acquainted with the Sharks and they eyed my coun- 
tenance with a solicitude that was almost humorous. Finn stood 
near the main-rigging perspiring with impatience and anxiety, fan- 
ning his long face with his cap, and sending glances in the direction 
of the sea, where presently those two alabaster-like spires now hid- 
den would be visible. 

“ Is it the Shark, think ’ee, sir ?” he cried in a breathless way. 

“My good Finn, how the dickens should I know? I know no 
more about the Shark than of Noah’s ark. But, seeing that the 
vessel we want is a schooner of some two hundred tons, of a fore- 
and-aft rig, bound our way, and a yacht to boot, then, if yonder 
little ship be not the chap we are in search of, this meeting with 
her will be an atrociously strange coincidence.” 

“Just what I think, sir,” he cried, still breathless. 

“ Do yon mean to shift your helm for her ?” 

“ She was abeam when first sighted, sir. I have brought her on 
the bow since then, as ye can see. But I’ll head straight if ye should 
think proper,” he exclaimed, with a look aloft and around. 


192 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Oh, by all means go slap for her, captain !” said I. “ That, yon 
know, will be my cousin’s first order.” 

The helm was put over and the yacht’s head fell off till you saw 
by the line of the fiashing glass through which the fellow aloft con- 
tinued to peer that the hidden sail had been brought about two 
points on the lee bow. All was now bustle on deck with trimming 
canvas, setting studding-sails, and the like. The dawn had found us 
close-hauled, with the top-gallant sail lifting and every sheet flat aft, 
and now we were carrying the wind abaft the beam with a subdued 
stormy heave of the yacht over the sulky swell. Indeed, Finn should 
have made sail to the first shift of helm ; but the poor fellow seemed 
to have lost his head till he had talked with me, scarce knowing how 
to settle his mind as to the right course to be instantly adopted in 
the face of that unexpected apparition which was showing like a 
snow-flake from aloft. For my part, I thought, I could not better 
employ the leisure that yet remained than by preparing for what was 
to come by a cold brine bath. So down I went, telling Finn that 
I would rout out Sir Wilfrid as I passed through the cabin and give 
him the news. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY, 


193 


CHAPTER XVIL 

WE RAISE THE SCHOONER. 

I DESCENDED iiito the Cabin, walked straight to the door of Wil- 
frid’s berth and knocked. 

“ Who’s there?” 

“ I, Charles. I have news for you.” 

“Come in, come in !” 

I entered, and found Wilfrid in his bunk propped up on his 
elbow, his eyes looking twice their natural size with the intensity of 
his stare, and one long uncouth leg already flung over the edge so 
that his posture was as if he had been suddenly paralyzed while in 
the act of springing onto the deck. 

“ What news, in the name of Heaven ? Quick, now, like a dear 
boy !” 

“There’s a schooner-yacht uncommonly like your Shark away 
down on the lee bow visible from aloft.” 

He whipped his other leg out of bed, and sat bolt-upright. I 
had expected some extravagance of behavior in him on his hearing 
this, but, greatly to my surprise, he sat silent in his bunk eying me, 
his brow dark, and his lips moving for several seconds, which might 
have been minutes for the time they seemed to run into. 

“ What is to-day, Charles?” 

“Thursday.” 

“ Ha ! It should be Monday. That light last night was an omen, 
as I told you. I knew some great event could not be far off.” His 
eyes kindled under their quivering lids, and an odd smile twisted his 
mouth into the expression of a sarcastic grin. It was as ugly a look 
in him as I had ever seen, and it gained heavily in the effect it pro- 
duced by his comparatively quiet manner. 

“ We are heading directly for her, of course?” 

“ Finn has her about two points on the lee bow,” said I. 

“Will that do?” he exclaimed. 

“ Why, yes; hold a weather-gage of the chase, it is said; though 
I think we shall be having r northerly blast upon us before the 
touches his meridian,” 

13 


194 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Is she the Sharks Charles ?” 

“ You know I never saw the vessel, Wilf. But Finn and the chap 
on the yard seem to have no doubt of her, and the skipper ought to 
know, anyway.” 

On this he leaped to the deck with a cry of laughter, and coming 
up to me, let fall his hand heavily upon my shoulder with such a 
grip of it that, spite of my having my coat on, it ached after he had 
let go like an attack of rheumatism. “Now what say you?” said 
he, stooping, for he was a taller man than I, and peering and grin- 
ning close into my face. “ You looked upon this chase as a crazy 
undertaking, didn’t you ? The sea was such a mighty circle, Charles ! 
the biggest ship in the world but an insignificant speck upon it, 
hey ?” 

He let go of me and brought his hands together, extending and 
slowly beating the air with them, with his body rocking. I awaited 
some passionate outfly, but w^hether his thoughts were too deep for 
words, or that he was satisfied to think what at another time he 
might have stormed out with, he held his peace. Presently and 
very suddenly he abandoned his singular attitude, and fell to collect- 
ing articles of his clothing, which he pulled on as though he would 
tear them to pieces. 

“ I’ll be with you on deck immediately,” said I, going to the door. 
But he did not seem to know that I was present; all the time he 
strained and dragged at his clothes he talked to himself rapidly, 
fiercely ; pausing once to smite his thigh with his open hand ; fol- 
lowing this on with a low, deep laugh, like that of a sleeper dream- 
ing. 

Well, thought I, as I stepped out and went to my berth, whether 
it prove the Shark or not we shall have to “ stand by,” as Finn 
hinted, for some queer displays to-day. I met Miss Jennings’s maid 
in the cabin, and asked if she was going to her mistress. She re- 
plied yes. “ Then,” said I, “ give her my compliments, and tell her 
that we have raised a large schooner-yacht during the night, and that 
Finn seems to think she is the Shark." 

As I entered my berth I caught myself smiling over my fancy of 
the look that would come into the sweet girl’s face when her maid 
gave her the message ; the brilliant gleam of mingled alarm, temper, 
astonishment in her eyes, the sudden flush of her cheek and its 
paleness afterwards, the consternation in the set of her lips and the 
agitation of her little hands like the flattering of falling snow-flakes 
as she dressed, But in goqd soptb, I, too, was feeling rni^htiljr ex'? 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


195 


cited once more ; I had cooled down somewdiat since going on deck 
and viewing the distant sail from the mast-head ; now that I was 
alone and could muse, my pulse rose with my imaginations till it al- 
most came to my thinking of myself as on the eve of some desperate 
and bloody business — boarding a pirate, say, with the chance of a 
live slow-match in his magazine, or cutting out something heavily 
armed and full of men under a castle bristling with artillery. Sup- 
posing the craft to be the Sharks what was to be the issue ? The 
Bride would be recognized, and Hope-Kennedy was not likely,. as I 
might take it, to let us float alongside of him if he could help it. 
Suppose we maimed her, and compelled her to bring to; what then? 
I had asked Finn this question long before, and he had said it would 
not come to a hand-to-hand struggle. But how could he tell ? If 
we offered to board, they might threaten to Are into us, and a 
single shot, let alone a wounded or a killed man, might raise blood 
enough to end in as grim an affray as ever British colors floated 
over. Small wonder that my excitement rose with all these fancies 
and speculations. And then again, supposing the stranger to be the 
Sharks there was (to me) the astonishing coincidence of falling in 
with her — picking her up, indeed, as though we had been steered 
dead into her wake by some spirit hand instead of blundering on 
her through a stroke of luck, which had no more reference to Finn’s 
calculations and suppositions and hopings than to the indications of 
the nose of our chaste and gilded figure-head. 

When I went on deck I spied Wilfrid coming down the fore- 
rigging. He held on very tightly, and felt about with his sprawling 
feet with uncommon cautiousness for the ratlines ere relaxing his 
grip of the shrouds. Finn was immediately under him, standing by, 
perhaps, to shoulder him up if he should turn dizzy. They reached 
the deck and came aft. 

“ She’s not yet in sight from the cross-trees,” exclaimed Wilfrid, 
puffing and irritable from nervousness and exertion and disappoint- 
ment, “ and I can’t climb higher.” 

“ If she’s the Shark , said I, “ you’re not going to raise her 
upon the horizon as if she were a beacon. But there’s a spread 
of wings here that she can’t show anyhow, and it will be strange 
if her white plumes are not nodding above that blue edge by 
noon.” 

“Ay, sir,” rumbled Finn, “ specially with that coming along,” 
pointing to the north, where the weather looked heavy and smoky 
and thunderous, with a purple rounding of shadow upon the sea-line, 


190 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


and a hot-looking copperish light flowing off the jagged summits 
into the dusty blue as though it were sundown that was reflected 
there, while the troubled roll of the swell out of the shadow on the 
ocean put a flnishing touch to the countenance of storm you found 
spreading astern from north-east to north-west. “There’ll be wind 
enough there, sir,” said Finn, keeping his square-ended stumpy fore- 
finger levelled, “to give us white water to above our bow ports anon, 
or I’m a codfish.” 

Wilfrid turned about and fell to pacing the deck ; he struck out 
as though walking for a wager, tossing his legs and swinging his 
arms and measuring the planks from the wheel to very nearly abreast 
of the galley. Such of the sailors as were to windward slided to the 
other side, where you saw them exchanging looks, though there was 
no want of respect in their manner, but on the contrary, an air of ac- 
tive sympathy, as if they were getting to master the full meaning of 
the existence of that sail below the horizon by observing how the re- 
port of it worked in the baronet. 

“ We must try and raise her,” muttered Finn to my ear, “ if only 
to pacify his honor by the sight of her. He can’t climb, and he’ll 
go out of himself if he don’t see her soon.” 

“But do you gain on her?” 

“ Why, yes; she is visible from the cross-trees already. But Sir 
Wilfrid can’t get so high.” 

Well, thought I, this should surely signify slower heels than the 
Shark is allowed to have. 

I went to the taffrail and overhung it, watching the sky astern, 
with an occasional mechanical glance at the wool-white spin of the 
wake gushing over the surface of the jumble of the swell like steam 
from the funnel of a locomotive. It was blowing a fresh wind, 
though I guessed it w’ould slacken away soon to pipe up in a fresh 
slant presently. The yacht was a great fabric of cloths, every stitch 
abroad that would hold air, and she drove through it humming, trou- 
bled as she was by the irregular heave of the sea. In fact her 
movements were so awkward as to render walking inconvenient, and 
nothing, I believe, but the not knowing what he w’as about could have 
furnished Wilfrid with his steady shanks that morning. It was like 
a bit of sleep-walking, indeed, where a man who, awake, could not 
look down forty feet without desiring to cast himself out of a 
window, safely and exquisitely treads a narrow ledge of roof as high 
as the top of London Monument. 

I was KStartled from my reyerie by an exclamation, and turning, saw 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


107 


him hastily approaching Miss Jennings, who had just arrived on deck. 
He came to her with his arms extended, as though he would em- 
brace her. 

“ Laura, have you heard ?” 

“/5 it the Shark, Wilfrid ?” 

“ Finn says yes. She exactly answers to the Shark's description. 
Hereabouts she should be ; this is her track. Yes, yes, it is the 
Shark. Would God it were Monday !” Then, seeing me looking, 
he bawled : “Eh, Charles, what other ship should she prove? Fore 
and aft — fore and aft, of the Shark's burden, as you and Finn say, a 
schooner, a pleasure craft by the color of her canvas ” — his face sud- 
denly darkened, and he said something to Miss Jennings, but what, I 
could not gather. She half turned away as if overcome by a sudden 
sense of sickness or faintness ; the effect of some expression of fierce 
joy, I dare say, on his part, some savage whisper of assurance that 
his opportunity was not far distant now, which acted upon her nerv- 
ous system, that trembled yet to the surprise of the news I had sent 
her through her maid. There was something so sad and appealing 
in her beauty just then that but for the feelings it possessed me with 
I might scarcely have suspected what a lover’s heart I already car- 
ried in my breast for her. The troubled sweetness of her glances, 
her pale cheeks and lips, the swift rise and fall of her bosom, beto- 
kened consternation and the conflict of many emotions, and, as I could 
not but think, a subduing sense of loneliness. Well, I must say I loved 
her the better for this weakness of spirit, for this recoil from the 
confrontment that she had been endeavoring to persuade herself she 
was looking forward to with a longing for it only a little less venom- 
ous than Wilfrid’s. Nothing, I had thought again and again, but 
the soul of a fond, tender, chaste woman, gentle in mind, and of a 
nature lovable, with the best weaknesses of her sex, could go clad in 
such graces as she walked in withal from her topmost curl of gold 
to the full, firm, elegant little foot on which she seemed to float to 
the buoyant measures of the yacht’s deck. 

Wilfrid addressed her again, hurriedly and eagerly, with the ges- 
ticulations of a Jew in a passion. She answered softly, continuously 
sending scared looks over the yacht’s bow. I heard him name his 
wife, but it was not for me to join them nor to listen, so I overhung 
the taffrail afresh, obse^iwing that even now there was a noticeable 
weakening in the weight of the wind, while the swing of the swell 
from a little to the westward of north was growing more regular, a 
longer and fuller heave with an opalescent glance in the vapor im- 


AN OdEAN TRAGEDA. 


lOS 

mediately over the sea-line, as though the weather was clearing past 
the rim of the ocean. 

“ Mr. Monson.” 

I turned. Miss Laura stood by my side. Wilfrid had left the 
deck. “ Is that vessel, that is said to be ahead of us, the Sharks do 
you think?” 

“ I wish I knew positively for your sake, that I might relieve your 
anxiety.” 

“ If she should prove to be the vessel that my sister is in ” — she 
drew a long, tremulous breath — “it will be a marvellous meeting, for 
I feel now as you have felt all through — now that that yacht is in 
sight from the mast up there — that this ocean is a vast wilderness.” 
She slowly ran her eyes, which were still charged with their scared 
look, along the sea-line. 

“ Well, Miss Jennings, hanging and marriage go by destiny, they 
say, and so does chasing a wife at sea apparently. I give you my 
word I am so excited I can scarcely talk.” 

“ But it may not be the Sharks 

“ Why, no.” 

“ I hope it is not,” she cried, starting to the rise in her voice, with 
a glance at the helmsman, who stood near us. 

“ I can see that in your face,” said I. 

“ Oh, I hope it is not, and yet I want it to be the Shark too. 
Wilfrid must recover Henrietta. But it makes my heart stand still 
to think of our meeting. Oh, her shame ! her shame ! and then to 
find me here. And what is to happen ?” 

“ Best let that craft turn out to be the Shark, though,” said I. 
“ Here we are with a programme of rambles that threatens the 
world’s end if we don’t fall in with the colonel. Keep your heart 
up,” said I, gently. “ What have you to fear? It is for the galled 
jade to wince. Why, t’other night you would have shot Hope-Ken- 
nedy had he stood up before you.” 

She tried to smile, but the movement of her lips swiftly faded out 
into their expression of grief and consternation. 

“ I will play my part,” she exclaimed, twisting her ring upon her 
finger. “ If my sister refuses to leave Colonel Hope-Kennedy, I 
have made up my mind not to leave her. Where she goes I’ll go.” 

“ I hope not,” I interrupted, “ for it might come. Miss Jennings, to 
my saying that where you go I'll go, and the colonel may have rather 
curious views on the subject of guests.” 

“ You said you were too excited to talk,” she exclaimed, with a 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


199 


little color mounting. “ It may be that I am stupidly influenced by 
old memories. I was always afraid of Henrietta. She had an im- 
perious manner, and an old lord whom I met at your cousin’s — I for- 
get his name — told Wilfrid that her eyes made him think of Mrs. 
Siddons in her finest scenes. I fear her influence upon me when I 
begin to entreat her. I know how she will look.” 

“All this is mere nervousness,” said I. “You thought of these 
things before, yet you are here. Besides, the sense of wrong-doing 
will mightily weaken the genius of wizandry in her — her power at 
least of exercising it and subduing by it — subduing even you, the 
tenderest and gentlest of girls; or depend on’t she’s no true mem- 
ber of your sex, but one of those demon women whom Coleridge de- 
scribes as wailing for their, or rather in her case for new^ lovers.” 

She made no reply. Shortly afterwards the breakfast bell sum- 
moned us below. 

At table Wilfrid spoke little, but his manner was collected ; whether 
it was that excitement was languishing in him or that he had man- 
aged to master himself, what he said was rational, his words and 
manner unclouded by that hectic which was wont to give the coun- 
tenance of a high fever to all he said and did when anything hap- 
pened to stir him up. He was stern and thoughtful, and it was easy 
to see that he accepted the vessel ahead as the Shark, and that he 
was settling his plans. I was heartily grateful for this posture in 
him. I never knew any one so fatiguing with his restlessness as my 
cousin. Half an hour of his company when he was much excited 
left one as tired, dry, and hollow as a four hours’ argument with an 
illogical man. He was too much preoccupied to notice how pale 
and subdued and scared Miss Laura was, struggle as she might in 
his presence to seem otherwise. I talked very cautiously for fear of 
provoking a discussion that might heat him. Once he asked me, in 
an angry, twitting way, as though to the heave-up within him of a 
sudden mood of wrath with a parcel of words atop which were bound 
to find the road out, whether I felt disposed now to challenge his 
judgment, whether I was still of opinion that the ocean was too 
wide a field for such a chase as this, and so on, proceeding steadily, 
but with rising warmth, through the catalogue of my early objections 
to the voyage ; but instead of answering him, I praised the bit of 
virgin corned beef off which I was breakfasting, wondered why it 
was that poultry was always insipid at sea, and so forced him back 
into his dark and collected silence, or obliged him to quit his subject. 

However, his inability to keep his attention long fixed helped me 


^00 


AN OCEAN TIUGEDY. 


here, for he never attempted to pick up the end of the thread I had 
cut ; though, little as he spoke, two-thirds of what he delivered him- 
self of might have been worked into hot arguments but for my cau- 
tious answers. 

I was not surprised on going on deck to find the wind no more 
than a light draught, with the main-boom swinging to the long roll 
of the yacht, and the canvas flapping with vicious snaps at sheet and 
yard-arm. The water seemed to wash thick as oil from the yacht’s 
sides, a dirty blue that went into an oozy sort of green northward. 
There was a deadne^s in the lift of the swell that made you think of 
an idiot shouldering his way through a crowd, and the eye sought in 
vain for a streak of foam for the relief of the crisp vitality of it. 

“ Is that wind or thunder, think you, Mr. Crimp ?” said I to the 
mate, whom I found in charge, while I pointed to the heaped-up 
folds of cloud astern, the brows of which were not far off the cen- 
tral sky, that, spite of the sunshine, was blurred to the very luminary 
himself with the shadow in the north and with tatters and curls and 
streaks of rusty brassish vapor risen off the line of the main body 
and sulkily floating southward. 

“ Wind or thunder?” asked Crimp, with a dull, indifferent look; 
“ well, ’tain’t tufted enough for thunder, but there’ll be a breeze, I 
allow, behind this here swell.” 

“ Are we raising the chap ahead ?” 

“ Not noticeably. She’ll have to shift her helium for us for that 
to happen at this pace,” sending an askew glance over the side. I 
was leaving him. “ Heard any more woices ?” he asked. 

“ No ; have you ?” 

“ No, and don’t want to. It’s been a-puzzling me, though,” he 
exclaimed, mumbling over a quid, the juice of which had stained the 
corners of his mouth into so sour a sneer that no artist could have 
painted it better. “ Tell ’ee what it is. I’m a-going to believe in 
ghosts.” 

“You can’t do better,” said I; “get hold of a ghost and it will 
explain everything for yon.” 

“ Well, ’tain’t a childish notion, anyhow. There’s first-class folks 
as believes in sperrits. What’s a ghost like ? Ne’er a man as I’ve 
asked for’ards knows saving the mute, who describes it as a hout- 
line.” 

“What’s inside his outline?” I asked. 

“ Why, that there Muffin can’t get farther than that. I says to 
him, ‘ How can a houtline speak ?’ ‘ Look here,’ says he, ‘ answer me 


AN OCEAN TRaGEDV. 


1201 


this : suppose ye takes a bottle and sucks out all the air from inside 
of it, what’s left?’ ‘A wacuura,’ says 1. ‘And what’s a wacuum?’ 
says he. ‘ Why,’ I says, says I, ‘ space, ain’t it?’ I says. ‘ And what’s 
space?’ says he. ‘ Why, nothin’, I suppose,’ I says, says I. ‘Then,’ 
says he, ‘ how can nothin’ exist ? And yet,’ says he, ‘ it do exist, be- 
cause ye can point to the bottle and say there it is. So with a ghost,’ 
says he ; ‘ it’s a houtline with nothin’ inside it if you like, but it’s 
as real in its emptiness as the inside of a bottle with nothin’ in it.’ ” 

At any other time I should have hugely enjoyed an argument 
with this acrid old sailor on such a subject as ghosts. There is no 
company, to my taste, to equal that of a sour, prejudiced, ignorant 
salt of matured years, whose knowledge of life has been gained by 
looking at the world through a ship’s hawse-pipe, and who is full to 
the throat with the sayings and the superstitions of the forecastle. 
Jacob Crimp was such a man. Indeed, he was the best example of 
the kind that I can recollect, thanks, perhaps, to the help he got 
from his queer sea eyes, glutinous in appearance as a jelly-fish, one 
peering athwart the other with a look of quarrelling about them 
that most happily corresponded with the sulky expression of his 
face and the growl of his voice that was like a sea blessing. But it 
was impossible to think of the schooner ahead and talk with this 
man about ghosts. I left him, and got into the foreshrouds and as- 
cended to the cross-trees, where, receiving the glass from the fellow 
on the yard above, I took a view of the sea over the bow, and caught 
plainly the canvas of the vessel we were heading for — her main-sail 
nsible to the boom of it, with a glimpse of her bowsprit end wrig- 
gling off into the dusky blue air at every rise of her bow to the lift 
of the swell. I noticed, however, that she had taken in her main- 
gaff top-sail, possibly with an eye to the weather astern ; but it was 
a thing to set me problemizing. Supposing her to be the Shark, 
either she had not yet sighted us or she had no suspicion of us. 
Fidler, her captain, would, when we showed fair, be pretty sure to 
twig us by our rig; but was it likely that the colonel and Lady 
Monson would gravely suppose that Wilfrid had started in chase of 
them ? That, indeed, might depend upon whether her ladyship had 
missed the colonel’s letter to her, which my cousin had asked me to 
read. Well, we should have to wait a little. My heart beat briskly 
as I descended to deck. Put yourself in my place, and think of the 
fiort of excitement that was threatened before that morning sun 
shining up there had set ! 

Half an hour later the weak draught had died out; the rolling of 


202 


aN ocean tragedy. 


tlie Bride was putting a voice of thunder into her canvas, and the 
strain on hemp and spar presently obliged old Crimp to take in his 
studding-sails, which he followed on by ordering the top-gallant sail 
to be rolled up, and the gaff-topsail hauled down. Wilfrid, who 
had arrived on deck, stood haggardly eying these manoeuvres, but 
he said nothing, contenting himself with an occasional look, as dark 
as the shadow astern of us, at the weather there, and a fretful stride 
to the rail, and a stormy stare at the sallow oil-smooth water that 
came swelling to the counter and washing the length of the little 
ship in a manner that made her stagger at times most abominably. 

“ Let that vessel prove what she may,” said I, sitting down on a 
grating abaft the wheel, close to which he was standing, “ we appear 
to have the heels of her in light airs, however it may be with her in 
a breeze of wind.” 

“ How do you know ?” he inquired, in a church-yard note. 

“ Why,” said I, “ I was just now in the cross-trees, and found her 
showing fair from them, whereas before breakfast she was only visi- 
ble from the top-gallant yard.” 

He looked at me with a heavy, leaden eye, and said, “ A plague 
on the wind ! It has all gone ; just when we want it, too.” 

“ We shall have a capful anon,” I exclaimed ; “ no need to whis- 
tle for it. Mark how it brightens down upon the sea-line yonder 
as that shadow floats upward. That means wind enough to whiten 
this tumbling oiliness for us.” 

He directed his gaze in a mechanical way towards the quarter in 
which I was looking, but said nothing. Miss Jennings came out of 
the companion. I took her hand and brought her to the grating. 

“A strange, oppressive calm,” she cried; “how sickly the sun- 
shine is ! Nature looks to be in as dull a mood as we are.” 

“ Wilf,” said I, “if that schooner is the Shark, what will you 
do?” 

“ What would you do ?” he answered, sternly, as though he im- 
agined I quizzed him, when, God knows, t was in a more sober and 
anxious humor than I can express. 

“ Well,” said I, very quietly and gravely, “ when I got my yacht 
within reach of her glasses, if I could manage it, I should signal that 
I wanted to speak her.” 

“ Quite right ; that’s what I shall do,” said he. 

“But after?” I exclaimed. 

“ After what ?” he cried. 

“ Why, confound it, Wilf, suppose she makes no response, holds 


OCEAN TRAGEDY. 20;^ 

on all, as we say at sea, and bowls along without taking the slight- 
est notice of us?” 

He approached me close, laid his great hand upon my shoulder, 
and thrust his long arm forth, straight as a handspike, pointing to 
the forecastle gun. “ There's my answer to that,” he cried in my 
ear, in a voice as disagreeable as the sound of a saw, with irritability. 
“You wished me to strike it down into the hold, d’ye remember? 
You were for ridiculing it from the moment of your catching sight 
of it; yet, without that messenger to deliver my mind, what answer 
would there be to the question you have just now put? Oh, my 
God,” he suddenly cried, smiting his forehead, “ I feel as if I shall 
go mad.” 

He crossed to the other side of the deck and paced it alone. Miss 
Jennings was too much dejected by all this, by the excitement of 
the time, by nervousness, grief, anxiety to converse ; nor, indeed, was 
my mood a very sociable one. I procured a chair for her, and pres- 
ently found myself alone, as Wilfrid was, wishing from the very bot- 
tom of my heart that Colonel Hope-Kennedy was hanged, her lady- 
ship in a lunatic asylum, and myself in my old West End haunts 
again, though somehow a misgiving as to the accuracy of this last 
desire visited me on a sudden with the glance I just then happened 
to cast at Miss Laura, who sat with her hands folded upon her lap, 
her head bowed in a posture of meditation that took an indescriba- 
ble character of pathos from the expression on her sweet face. 

It was now a little after ten o’clock. Crimp, who was pacing 
near me that Wilfrid might have the whole range of the weather 
quarter-deck to himself, suddenly rumpled out, “Here comes the 
wind at last !” The stern of the yacht was still upon the north, 
where, at the very verge of the waters, which sluggishly heaved like 
molten lead under the dark canopy of vapor that overhung them, 
the sea was roughening and whitening to the whipping of wind, 
which looked at that distance to be coming along in a straight line, 
though as it approached us I witnessed a strange efEect of long 
fibrine feelers sweeping out of the hoarse and rushing ridges of foam 
which were seething towards us — like darting livid tongues of creat- 
ures hidden in the yeast behind tipped with froth that made one 
think of the slender stem of a vessel ripping through the surface. 
In a few minutes the boiling popple was all about us, hissing to our 
counter, with a shriek of wind which flashed with such spite into 
the great space of main-sail and the whole spread of square top- 
sail that the yacht for a moment was bowed down to her ways, fair 


AN OCEAN TEAGEOY. 


ii04 

as it took her on her quarter. An instant she lay so, then came 
surging back to an almost level deck, with her rigging alive as with 
the ringing of bells, took a sudden plunge forward, throwing from 
either bow a mass of creaming sea, the summit of which went spin- 
ning like a snow-storm ahead of her; then gathering impulse in a 
long, floating, launching plunge, as it were, she went sliding through 
it, faster and faster yet, till she had a wake like a mill-race in chase 
of her. 

It was a scene full of the life and spirit and reality of the ocean, af- 
ter the spell of sulky calm, with its dingy northern heaving of water 
and its haze of weak, moist sunlight in the south and east. Finn to 
the first of the blast came on deck and fell a-bawling,the sailors sprang 
from rope to rope with lively heartiness, the slack running-gear blew 
out in semicircles, which with the curve of the canvas and the lean 
of the masts as the yacht swept forward, with the brine boiling high 
along her, gave a wild, expectant, headlong look to the whole rush- 
ing fabric, something indeed to make one fancy that the spirit of her 
owner, the expression of whose face had her own strained, eager, 
rushing air, so to speak, had passed into and vitalized her — mere 
structure of timber as she was — into passionate human yearnings. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


205 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

IS SHE THE “shark?” 

It was not to prove a gale, thougli it would have been hard to 
guess what lay behind that dirty jumble of white and livid terraces 
which had been stealthily creeping all the morning zenithward. 
The clouds scattered to the rush of the wind ; the sun, with a bright- 
ened disk, leaped from one flying vaporous edge to another, dazzling 
out. the snows of the dissolving seas till the eye reeled from the glare 
of the brilliant foam and the sharp and lovely sparkle of the pure 
dark blue between. Indeed, before long the wind steadied down 
into a noble sailing breeze, with a piebald sky of warm and cheerful 
weather steadily swinging into the south-east, as though the whole 
hbaven revolved from one quarter to another like a panorama on a 
cylinder. Wilfrid looked his wishes, but said nothing. He hung 
apart in a fashion that was the same as telling me to keep off, nor 
had he anything to say to Miss Jennings. Finn, easily interpreting 
his master’s face, piled cloths on the yacht till it seemed as though 
another rag would blow the whole lofty white fabric of canvas, ta- 
pering spar, and rigging clean over the bows. We fled along in 
thunder, and to every courtesy of the vessel’s head the water recoiled 
in a roar of spume as far as the jib-boom end, to speed aft as fast, 
you would have thought, as the eye could follow it, the swell wash- 
ing to the counter as if to help her. 

We held on in this way for some time, when suddenly Wilfrid, 
who had come to a stand at the weather-rail, and was looking ahead, 
bawled, with the note of a shriek in his voice, “ Look L” and out 
sprang his long arm, pointing directly on a line with our bowsprit. 

“ Ay, there she is, sure enough !” cried I, as I caught sight, to a 
floating lift of the deck at that moment, of the pearlish gleam of 
canvas of a milky brilliance slanting past the soft whiteness of a 
head of sea against the marble look of the sky there, where the sun- 
touched clouds were going down to the ocean edge in a crowd with 
a vein of violet here and there among them. I glanced at Wilfrid, 
not knowing what sort of mood this first glimpse of the yacht would 
put into him ; but there was no alteration of face, His countenance 


206 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


had set into an iron-hard expression ; methonght resolution could 
never show more grimly stubborn. Miss Jennings came to the side 
to look. 

“ There is little to be seen as yet,” said I to her, “ but we shall be 
heaving her hull up very soon. She is taking it quietly.” 

Finn stood near; I took his glass from him and levelled it. 
“ Why, ’tis merely ambling with her, captain,” said I ; “ gaff-topsails 
down and no hint of square-sail that I can make out. The cloud 
we are making astern should puzzle her. D’ye think Captain Fidler 
will recognize this vessel ?” 

“ Why, yes, sir ; bound to it,” he answered. “ We aren’t like 
the Sharks you know ; our figure-head alone is as good as naming 
us. Then our sheer of bow ud sarve like a sign-post to Fidler. 
Back this by our square rig, and he’d have to ha’ fallen dark to mis- 
take ” — meaning by dark, blind. 

“ Is the Shark to be as easily recognized?” asked Miss Jennings, 
who stood close by me, occasionally laying her hand upon my arm 
to steady herself, and putting the other to her lips to speak, for the 
breeze ran with a scream in it at times over the rail in a manner to 
sweep the words out of her mouth as though her syllables were the 
smoke of a cigarette. Finn shook his long head. 

“ Lay me close aboard, miss,” said he, “ and I’ll tell you the Shark 
from another craft ; but there’s nothin’ distinct about her as there is 
with us. She’s black, without gilt, like a great many others, of a 
slaving pattern, long, low, without spring forrards or aft, with apple 
sides like others again. But,” said he, after a pause, during which 
he had taken a look through his telescope at the glistening fragment 
hovering like a butterfly over the bow, “ though I don’t want to say 
too much, sir. I’d be willing to lay down a good bit o’ money on the 
chance of yonder chap proving the Shark. Time, place, all sarcum- 
stances point her out.” 

“ True,” said I ; “ but there are many schooners afloat.” 

“Ay, sir; but such a coincidence as that, your honor,” said he, 
pointing, “ sits too far on the werge of what’s likely to fit it to sarve 
as part of a man’s reckonings.” 

“I agree with Captain Finn,” said Miss Laura; “besides, I feel 
here that it is the vessel we are pursuing.” She laid her hand upon 
her bosom, and turned to cross the deck where her chair was. 

I assisted her to her seat, with a peep out of the corner of my eye 
at Wilfrid, but there was no encouragement in his face ; so, posting 
myself forward of the compaoion for the shelter pf it, I lighted ^ 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


207 


cigar and puffed away in silence till the luncheon-bell rang. Wilfrid 
did not come to table. When I returned on deck, after lingering 
nearly an hour below, partly with the wish to put some heart into Miss 
Jennings, who was pitifully dejected and nervous, and partly because 
I had had a long spell in the open air, and guessed that for some 
time yet there would be little enough of the schooner showing to be 
worth looking at — I say when I returned I found my cousin at the 
rail, with his arms tightly clasped on his breast, staring fixedly ahead, 
with a face grim, indeed, with the scowling contraction of the brows, 
but as collected in the determined severity of it as can be imagined. 
In fact, the sight of the schooner ahead had gathered all his faculties 
and wandering fancies and imaginations into a bunch, so to speak, and 
his mind as you saw it in his eyes, in the set of his lips, in the re- 
solved and contained posture of his body, was as steady as that of 
the sanest man aboard us. It was without wonder, however, that I 
perceived we had risen the yacht to the line of her rail, when I noticed 
that she still kept under short canvas while the Bride was bursting 
through the surges to the impulse now even of the lower studding- 
sail. I took Finn’s glass from him and made out a very handsome 
schooner, loftily sparred, with an immense head to her main-sail, the 
boom of which hung far over her quarter, while she swung in grace- 
ful floating leapings from hollow to ridge, with the round of her 
stern lifting black and flashing off each melting brow' that underran 
her. We had, indeed, come up with her hand over hand, but then 
it would be almost the worst point of sailing for a fore-and-aft vessel, 
while we were carrying in our square rig alone pretty nearly the same 
surface of canvas that she had aboard. She was too far off as yet, 
even with the aid of the glass, to distinguish her people. 

“What do you think, Finn, nowT"' said I, turning to him. He 
stood close beside me, with his long face working with anxiety, and 
straining his sight till I thought he would shoot his eyes out of their 
sockets. 

“ If she ain’t the Shark,'' said he, “ she’s the Flying Dutchman. 
I had but one doubt. Yonder craft’s boats are white, and my notion, 
but I couldn’t swear to him, was that the Shark's boats were blue. 
I’ve been forrards among the men, a few of whom are acquainted 
with Lord Winterton’s yacht, and one of ’em says her boats was blue, 
while th’ others are willing to bet their lives that they are white.” 

“ But the cut of her as she shows yonder proves her the Shark,, 
you think?” 

“ I do, sir,” be answered, emphatically, 


208 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Well,” said I, fetching a deep breath, “ after thisy hang me if I 
don’t burn my book and agree with your mate, old Jacob Crimp, to 
believe in ghosts.” 

I levelled the glass again, and uttered an exclamation as I got the 
lenses to bear upon her. 

“ By thunder, Finn ! yes, they look to have the scent of us now. 
See ! there goes her gaff-topsail !” 

Wilfrid caught my words. 

“ What are they doing ?” he roared, bursting out in a mad way 
from his wrapt, iron-like silence ; “ making sail, d’ye say ?” and he 
came running up to us with an odd thrusting forward of his head, 
as though straining to determine what was scarce more than a blur to 
his short sight. He snatched the glass from my hand. “ Yes,” he 
shouted, “and there goes her square- sail. By every saint, Finn, 
there’s an end of my doubts and he closed the glass with a ringing 
of the tubes as he telescoped them that would have made you think 
the thing was in pieces in his hands. 

“ Shall I signal her to heave to, your honor ?” exclaimed Finn, 
speaking with a doubtful eye as if measuring the distance. 

“ Ay, at once,” cried Wilfrid, “ but ” — he cast a look at the gaff 
end — “ she’ll not see your colors there,” pointing vehemently. 

“ I’ll run ’em up at the fore. Sir Wilfrid ; they blow out plain 
there, with the t’gallant halyards let go.” 

“ Do as you will, only you must make her know my meaning,” 
cried ray cousin, and he went with an impetuous stride right aft, and 
resumed his former sentinel posture. Miss Jennings came timidly 
up to me. 

“ She is the Sharks then ?” she said, in a low voice. 

“ All who know her are agreed, Finn says, saving here and there 
a doubt about the color of her boats,” I answered. 

She had a sailor’s eye for sea effects, and instantly noticed that 
the schooner ahead had broadened her show of canvas. 

“DoAhey suspect who we are?” she exclaimed, talking as though 
she were musing. 

“No doubt the Bride is recognized, and they will run away if 
they can.” 

She looked at Wilfrid. “ I do not like to speak to him,” she ex- 
claimed. 

“ He’s killing Hope-Kennedy over and over again,” said I ; “ his 
wife is before him, too, and he is haranguing her. Bless ns, what 
a wonderful thing human imagination is!” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


209 


Up went the signal -flags forward in a string of balls, a man 
tugged, the bunting broke and streamed out in its variety of lus- 
trous colors, every flag stiff as a sheet of horn band painted, with 
the light of the sky past it showing through. I caught myself 
breathing short and hard while, waiting for what was to follow this 
summons to the running craft. We had been crushing through it 
after her with the speed of a steamer, and, supposing her indeed to 
be the Sharks had literally verified Wilfrid’s boast that the Bride 
could sail two feet to her one. But now that she had broadened 
her wings there was a threat of considerable tediousness in the 
chase. 

“ Do you suppose they have made out what yacht we are ?” I 
asked Finn. 

“ Likely as not, sir. I shall think so for sartin if they don’t 
shorten sail on reading that bunting up there. A stranger ud be 
willing enough to speak us. Why not? ’Tis understandable that 
Fidler should have kept his rags small in the face of the muck that 
was crawling in the nor’rad this morning. He's got nothin’ to chase, 
and was always a careful man, so I’ve heard ; and I tell ye, sir,” said 
he, in a subdued way, speaking with his eyes fixed on Miss Jen- 
nings, who stood close with a white face, “ that the sight of his 
easy canvas is almost the same to me as seeing of her ladyship a-sit- 
ting there,” levelling his hairy finger at the yacht, “ for, fond as 
she was of the water, let anything of a breeze come and she was 
always for having Sir Wilfrid reduce sail.” He put the glass to his 
eye as he spoke. “ Holloa !” he exclaimed, in an instant, “ they’re 
hoisting a color. There it goes — there it blows. Oh, my precious 
eyes ! What is it ? what is it ?” he rumbled, talking to himself and 
working into the glass as though he would drive an eye clean through 
it. “ Why, Mr. Monson,” he bawled, “ I’m Field-marshal the Duke 
o’ Wellington, sir, if she ha’n’t hoisted Dutch colors.” 

I snatched the glass from his hand, and sure enough made out 
the Batavian horizontal tricolor streaming from the peak signal-hal- 
yards like a fragment of rainbow against the lustrous curve of the 
main-sail. 

“ Wilfrid,” I shouted, addressing him as he stood right aft. Miss 
Laura and I and the skipper being grouped a little forward of the 
main-rigging, “ they’ve hoisted Dutch colors. She’s a Hollander, 
not the Shark !" and I fetched something like a breath of relief, 
for it was a condition of suspense that you wanted to see an end to 
one fashion or another as quickly as possible, 

U 


210 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


He approached us slowly, took the glass from my hand in silence, 
and after a steady inspection turned to Finn. 

“ She’s the Sharks' he said, with a fierce snap in his manner that 
was like letting fly a pistol at the skipper. 

“ Your honor thinks so ?” 

“Don’t you?” 

“ Them Dutch colors. Sir Wilfrid — ” 

“A device, a trick! What could confirm one’s suspicions more 
than yonder display of a foreign ensign ? She’s the Shark, I tell 
you, and that color’s a stratagem. What do you say, Charles ?” 

“ I’m blest if I know what to think,” said I ; “if she’s the Shark, 
why has she taken it so leisurely, only just now setting her square- 
sail and gaff-topsail, though we have been in sight for a long time, 
crowding down upon her under a press that should a while since have 
excited their suspicions ? No need for them to hoist Dutch colors. 
If Fidler thinks he is chased, why don’t he haul his wind, instead of 
keeping that fore-and-aft concern almost dead before it, as if he didn’t 
know on which side to carry his main-boom ?” 

“ She’s the Shark T thundered Wilfrid ; “ the flag she is flying is a 
lie. Finn,” he cried, in a voice so savagely imperious, so confoundedly 
menacing, that I saw Miss Laura shrink, while the poor skipper gave 
a hop as though he had touched something red-hot, “ are we over- 
hauling that vessel ?” 

“Yes, Sir Wilfrid.” 

“How long will it take us to come within gunshot of her?” 

Finn scratched the back of his head. “ Mr. Monson, sir,” said he, 
addressing me, “ that gun ’ll throw about three-quarters of a mile, I 
allow.” 

“ Call it a mile,” said I. 

My cousin, with his nostrils distended to the widest, his respira- 
tion hysteric, his whole body on the move, and with that raised look 
in his face I have formerly described, stared at Finn as though he 
would slay him with his gaze. The skipper scratched the back of 
his head again. 

“ Well, your honor, if yon schooner holds as she is, and this here 
breeze don’t take off, we ought to be within gunshot ” — here he pro- 
duced a silver watch of the size and shape of an apple — “ in three 
hours’ time, making it about half-past five.” 

“ How far is she distant now ?” 

“ Between three and four mile, Sir Wilfrid.” 

“ Get your gun ready.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


211 


“A blank shot, yonr honor?” 

“A blank devil, and be d d to you. Load with ball. Who’s 

your gunner?” 

“We shall have to manage among us. Sir Wilfrid,” turning a face 
of alarm upon me. 

I was about to remonstrate, but there was an expression in the eye 
that my cousin bent on me at that instant that caused me to take 
Miss Jennings’s hand as an invitation to her to cross the deck and 
walk. 

“ Charles,” said he, “ you told me that you knew something about 
gunnery. Will you handle that weapon yonder for me ?” 

“ Wilf, it is madness,” said I. “ What ! plump a shot into a craft 
that may not be the vessel you want ! or, which in my opinion is just 
as bad, fire at with a chance of sinking a yacht with a lady aboard — 
that lady your wife — the woman whom you have embarked on this 
extraordinary adventure to rescue?” 

My blood rose with my words. I dared not trust myself to reason 
with him. I crossed the deck with Miss Laura, and when we faced 
round I spied Wilfrid marching forward with Finn, and presently he 
was by the side of the gun gesticulating vehemently to a body of sea- 
men who had collected round the piece. 

Our signals were kept flying at the fore, while with the naked eye 
one could behold the minute spot of color steadfast at the schoon- 
er’s peak. Onward she held her course, swarming steadily forward 
in long gliding courtesyings over each frothing surge that chased her, 
a most shapely and beautiful figure with a long flash of her low black 
wet side coming off the line of foam like a lift of dull sunshine, while 
on high soared the stretches of her sails with something of the airi- 
ness of a dragon-fly’s wing in the milk-white softness of their spaces 
against the cloudy distance beyond. The time passed. Wilfrid re- 
mained forward. Pie stood upon one of the anchors swaying with 
folded arms to the movement of the yacht, stiff as a handspike, his 
face fixedly directed at the schooner ahead. The sailors hung about, 
chewing hard, spitting much, saying things to one another past the 
hairy backs of their hands, here and there a whiskered face looking 
stupid with a sort of dull wonder that was like an inane smile ; but 
the fact is, from Cutbill down to the youngest hand all the seamen 
were puzzled, excited, and uneasy. The state of my cousin’s mind 
showed plainly to the least penetrating of those nautical eyes. No 
man among them could imagine what wild directions would be de- 
livered, and though I made no doubt the gun would be let fly when 


212 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


the order to fire was given, I was pretty sure that should it come to 
a command to board the schooner by force the men would decline. 
Sometimes Finn was forward, fluttering near Wilfrid, sometimes aft, 
restlessly inspecting the compass or going feverishly to the side and 
looking over, when again and again I would hear him say in a voice 
as harsh as the sound of a carpenter’s plane : “ Glory, glory ! blow, 
my sweet breeze, blow !” manifestly unconscious that he spoke aloud, 
but evidently obtaining some ease of mind from the ejaculation. 

The sun went floating down westward, the breeze shifted a point or 
two towards him and then slackened, though it continued to blow a 
fine sailing wind, with a regular sea that had long before lost the ear- 
ly snappish and worrying hurl put into it by the first of the dark 
blast. Slowly we had been gaining upon the chase; minute after 
minute I had been expecting to see her put her helm down, flatten 
her sheets, and go staggering away into the reddening waters welter- 
ing and washing to the sky under the descending sun, on what she 
might know to be some best point of sailing. She kept her square- 
sail spread and the Dutch flag hoisted, and swung stubbornly ahead 
of us, making nothing of our signals, which still continued to fly. 
Through Finn’s glass I could distinguish the figures of a few seamen 
forward and a couple of men pacing the weather side of the quarter- 
deck. Now and again a head would show at the rail as though 
watching us, but the suggestion I seemed to find in the general post- 
ure and air aboard the vessel was that of indifference, as though, in 
fact, we had long ago exhausted curiosity, and had been quitted as a 
spectacle for inboard jobs and the routine of such life as was led 
there. 

“/s she the Shark?" I said to Finn. 

“ If she isn’t,” said he, “ my eyes ain’t mates, sir. It is but a ques- 
tion of the color of the quarter-boats.” 

“ I see no name on the counter.” 

“ No, sir ; the Shark has no name painted on her.” ' 

“ She’s steered by a wheel,” said I. 

“ So is the Shark, sir.” 

“What do the men forward who know the Shark think now?” 
I asked. 

“ Two of ’em say that it ain’t her ; the rest that it is. But ne’er 
a man aboard has that knowledge of her that ud give him con- 
science enough to take an oath upon it. Glory, glory, there she 
walks ! By the piper that played afore Moses in the woods, your 
honor, ’twill be the fairest sunrise that ever I see that lights up the 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


213 


end of this d d mess, begging your pardon, Mr. Monson, and 

yours, miss. I’m sure. Fact is, I feel all of a-work inside me, like 
a brig’s boom in a calm.”. 

“ I am unable to hold the glass steady,” said Miss Laura. “ Mr. 
Monson, I see no signs of a lady on board. Do you. Captain 
Finn?” 

“ Not so much as the twinkle of a hinch of petticoat, miss ; but if 
her ladyship’s there, of course she’d keep below.” 

“You know Captain Fidler?” said I. 

“Very well, sir.” 

“ There are two figures walking that quarter-deck. Is one of them 
he?” 

“ It’s too fur off, sir. I’ve been looking and looking, but it’s too 
fur off, I say, sir. Mind !” he suddenly roared, “ they’re a-going to 
fire,” and he rolled hurriedly forward. 

A moment or two after crash ! went the gun. The blast broke in 
a dead shock upon the ear, and the smoke blew away over the lee 
bow as red with the tincturing of the sun as a veil of vapor at the 
edge of the crimson moon. 

Miss Jennings shrieked. A long yearning gush of sea catching 
the Bride fair on the quarter swung her for a breath or two so as to 
bide the schooner, then to her next yaw, with Wilfrid still on the 
anchor, bending forward in impetuous headlong pose, and two or 
three sailors handling the gun, and a crowd of men in the head star- 
ing their hardest, the chase swept into view afresh. 

“Ha!” I shouted, “she’s heaving to.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Monson !” cried Miss Jennings, clasping her hands. 

Instantly Finn fell to thundering out orders. 

“In stun’-sails! clew up the t’-garn sail! down square-s’l; down gaff- 
top-s’l !” Twenty such directions volleyed from him ; in a thrice the 
decks of the Bride were as busy as an ant-hill ; canvas rattled like 
musketry as it was hauled down ; the strains of Cutbill’s whistle 
shrilled high above the voices of the men, and a true ocean meaning 
came rolling into the commotion and clamor from the yeasty seeth- 
ing over the side, the singing of the wind past the ear, and the frisky 
motions of the yacht as she brought the sea on her bow heading, to 
Finn’s yell to the man at the helm to range to windward of the 
schooner, that w’as now fast coming round, with her square-sail de- 
scending, her main-tack hoisting, and her top-sail withering, with her 
head to the west. 

Distance is mightily deceptive at sea. How far off the schooner 


214 


AN OCEAN TliAGEDY. 


was when they let drive at her from our forecastle I could not say. 
She was probably out of range ; at all events she showed no damage 
as she came rounding to, away down upon the blue throbbing which 
had softened much within the hour, with a bronze gleam of sheath- 
ing, as she heeled over ere her canvas broke shivering in the eye of 
the wind, that wonderfully heightened the beauty of the long, low, 
black, most shapely hull, and the bland and elegant fabric of bright 
spar and radiant cloths shining white yet through the faint claret 
tinge in the atmosphere. Wilfrid came slowly aft, constantly look- 
ing at her as he walked. Under reduced canvas we swept down lei- 
surely, sliding lightly upon the run of the surge, that was now on the 
beam. I examined her carefully through the glass, while Miss Laura 
stood by my side asking questions. 

“ Is she the Shark 

“ She may be. But such of her crew as I make out don’t look to 
me to be English.” 

“ Can you distinguish any woman on board ?” 

“ Nothing approaching a woman. They mean to board us. They 
have a fine boat of a whaling pattern hanging to leeward, and there 
are sailors preparing to lower her. They are not Englishmen, I 
swear. I see a large fat man delivering orders apparently with slug- 
gish gesticulations, which strike me as distinctly Dutch. How about 
her figure-head ?” I continued, and I brought the glass to bear on 
the bows of the schooner. “ Ha !” I cried, and looked around. 

Wilfrid was watching the schooner right aft, where he had stood 
during the greater part of the chase, his arms folded as before, the 
same iron-hard expression on his countenance. I called to him : 

“ What is the figure-head of the Shark 

He started, and answered : “ I don’t know. Ask Finn and so 
saying, walked towards us. 

The skipper was giving some instructions to Crimp on the other 
side of the deck. 

“ Captain Finn !” I called. 

“Sir?” 

“ What’s the Shark's figure-head ?” 

“ A gold ball in a cup shaped like a lily, your honor.” 

“Then, Wilfrid,” I cried, shoving the glass into his hands, “your 
pursuit must carry you farther afield yet, for that craft’s figure-head 
is a white eflSgy, apparently a woman’s head.” 

His manner to the sudden, desperate surging of the disappoint- 
ment in him fell in a breath into the old form of the craziness of his 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


215 


moods of excitement. He looked through the glass, and then roar- 
ed out : 

“Finn !” 

The skipper came bundling over to us. 

“ That vessel is not the Shark'^ 

“I’ve been afeared not, sir. I’ve been afeared not,” said Finn* 
“ Like as two eggs, ends on ; but now she’s drawed out — ’tain’t only 
the figure-head* She ha’n’t got the Shark's length of bowsprit.” 

Wilfrid dashed the telescope down onto the deck. “ A fool’s 
chase I” he exclaimed, scarcely intelligible for the way he spoke with 
his teeth set. “ Heavenly God, what a disappointment 1 But it 
should have been Monday, it should have been Monday,” and his 
gaze went in a scowling, wandering way from us to the schooner. 

“I suppose you know,” said I to Finn, “that they’re standing by 
to lower a boat when we shall have come to a stand ?” 

“Ay, sir, I know it,” exclaimed Finn, who had picked up his 
telescope and was feeling over it in a nervous, broken-down manner 
as though he feared it was injured, but durst not look to make sure 
while Wilfrid stood nigh. “ I shall heave to to looard for their con- 
venience and with that he walked aft to the wheel. 

Wilfrid looked crushed, with something absolutely lifeless in the 
dull leaden blank of his eyes. It was perhaps fortunate for us, if 
not for him, that this sudden prodigious blow of disappointment 
should have completed the sense of physical and mental exhaustion 
which had inevitably attended the war of emotions that had been 
going on all day in his weak mind, otherwise Heaven alone knows 
what miserable and painful display might have followed this failure 
of his expectations. I was much affected by his manner, and endeav- 
ored to console him, but he motioned me to silence with a gesture of 
the hand, and seated himself on the skylight, where he remained with 
his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the deck, apparently heeding 
nothing that passed around him. 

“ He’ll rally after a little,” said I to Miss Laura, who furtively 
watched him with eyes sad with the shadow of tears. 

“ It ought to have been the Shark, Mr. Monson,” she exclaimed, 
in a low voice. “ My cowardly heart all day has been praying other- 
wise ; and now I would give ten years of my life that my sister were 
there — for his sake, for mine, and for yours, too, that this wretched 
voyage of expectation and mistakes and superstitions, oh, and I do 
not know what else,” she added, with a little toss of her arms, like 
a wringing of her hands, “ might come to an end.” 


216 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


The sailors forward were eying the vessel steadily as we approach- 
ed her. By this time all hands were aware of the blunder that had 
been made, and one seemed to see a kind of suspense in the posture 
of the fellows, with a half-grin in it, too, as though ’twas an incident 
to be as much laughed at as wondered at. The breeze continued to 
slacken, the seas were momentarily losing weight as they rolled, the 
gushing of the western crimson floated in the air like a delicate red 
smoke, with a heap of flame-colored clouds resting broodingly upon 
the southern confines and the new moon over the sun, a wonder for 
the bright sharpness of its curve in such a hectic as she stood in. 
We ran down and hove to within easy hailing distance to leeward of 
the schooner, but it was plain that Mynheer had no notion of talking 
to us from over his rail. His fine large boat hung manned at the 
davits as we rounded to, with a gang of fellows at either fall, and no 
sooner was our way arrested than down slowly sank the six-oared fab- 
ric. The oars sparkled in the red light, and away she came for us. 

“ Charles !” called my cousin from the skylight. I went to him. 
“ I’m too ill to be worried,” said he ; “ represent me, dear boy, will 
you ? Get us out of this mess as best you can, and as quickly.” 

He spoke faintly, and slightly staggered after he had risen. Miss 
Jennings, seeing this, took his arm, and together they went below. 

I stood at the gangway along with friend lYnn. ’Twas a ludi- 
crous position to be in, and what excuses to make I knew not, unless 
it was to come to my explaining the full motive and meaning of our 
expedition — a sort of candor I did not like the idea of. In the 
stern-sheets of the approaching boat was the large fat man I had 
previously taken notice of on the schooner’s quarter-deck. His face 
was as round as the moon, with a smudge of bristly yellow mus- 
tache under a bottle-shaped nose; his person was the completest 
pudding of a figure that can be imagined, as though forsooth a huge 
suit of clothes had been filled out with suet. He wore a blue cap 
with a shovel-shaped peak and a piece of gold lace on it going from 
one brass button to the other. 

“ That’s not Fidler,” said I to Finn. 

“ Fidler !” he ejaculated, staring with all his might at the boat ; 
“ there’s twenty Fidlers in that man, your honor. Why, Fidler’s a 
mere rib, lean enough to shelter himself under the lee of a rope-yarn.” 

The boat came fizzing alongside handsomely, and the fat man, 
watching his opportunity, planted himself upon the steps and rose like 
a whale to our deck, upon which he stepped. In a very phlegmatic, 
leisurely way he stood staring around him for a little out of a pair 


AN OOEaN THaGEDY. 


217 


of small, greenish, expressionless eyes, and with a countenance that 
discovered no signs of any sort of emotion ; then in the deepest 
voice I ever heard in a man, a tone that literally vibrated upon the 
ear like the low note of a church organ, he said in Dutch, “Who 
speaks my language ?” 

I knew a few sentences in German, enough to enable me to under- 
stand his question, but by no means enough to converse with, even if 
the man spoke that tongue, so I said bluntly in English, “ No one, sir.” 

He wheezed a bit, looking stolidly at me, and exclaimed, “You are 
captain ?” 

I motioned to Finn. 

“ Vy you vire ot me?” he demanded, turning his fat, emotionless 
face upon the skipper. 

Finn touched his cap. “ Heartily sorry, sir ; ’twas all a blunder, 
happening through our mistaking you for another craft. I’m very 
willing to ’pologize and do whatever’s right.” 

The Dutchman listened apathetically, then slowly bringing his fist 
of the shape, if not the hue, of a leg of beef to his vast spread of 
breast, he exclaimed in a voice even deeper than his former utterance, 
“ Vot I ask is vy you vire ot me ?” 

Finn substantially repeated his former apology. The Dutchman 
gazed at him dully, with an expression of glassiness in his eyes. 

“Vot schip dis?” 

Finn answered with alacrity, “ The schooner-yacht Bride, sir.” 

“ Zhe vight vor herr nation ?” sending a lethargic glance at our 
mast-head as if in search of a pennant. 

“ No, sir,” cried Finn ; “ we’re a pleasure vessel.” 

“Dere is no var,” exclaimed the Dutchman, shaking his head, 
“ between mine coundry und yours.” 

“ Ho no, sir,” exclaimed Finn. 

“Den I ask,” said the Dutchman, in a voice like a trombone, “ vy 
you vire ot me ?” 

This promised no end. I hastily whispered to Finn, “Leave him 
to me. Turn to quietly and trim sail and get way upon the vessel. 
He’ll take no other hint, I fear.” Finn sneaked off. “ Pardon me, 
sir,” said I, “ you’ll have heard from the captain that our firing at 
you was a blunder into which we were led by mistaking your ship. 
We desire to tender you our humble apology, which I trust you will 
see your way to accept without delay, as we are very desirous of 
proceeding on our voyage.” 

He looked at me with a motionless head and a face as vacant of 


218 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


human intelligence as a cloud, with its fat, its paleness, its Alp upon Alp 
of chin, then ponderously and slowly putting his hand into his breast, 
he pulled out a great pocket-book, and said, “ Vot dis schip’s name?” 

“ The Bridesmaid^'' said I. 

He wrote down the word, wheezing laboriously. 

“Your captain name?” 

“ Fidler,” I answered. 

This he entered. 

“ Owner ?” 

“ Colonel Hope-Kennedy.^’ 

“ Ow you shpell ?” 

I dictated, and he put down the letters as I delivered them. 

“ Vhere you vrom ?” 

“ Limerick,” I answered. 

“Ow you shpell?” He got the word, and then said, “ Vere you 
boun’ ?” 

“To the Solomon Group,” I answered. 

This I had to spell for him, too. He wrote with such imperturba- 
bility, with such a ponderosity of phlegmatic manner in his posture, 
with such whale-like asthmatic wheezings, broken only by the trem- 
bling notes of his deep, deep voice, that again and again I was nearly 
exploding with laughter; and, indeed, had I caught anybody’s eye 
but his, I must certainly have whipped out with the merriment that 
was almost suffocating me. He slowly returned the note-book to 
his pocket, and exclaimed, “Goot; you hear more of dis,” and with 
that walked to the gangway. 

“ Pray forgive me,” said I, following him and speaking very cour- 
teously ; “ will you kindly tell me the name of your ship ?” 

He regarded me with a kind of scowl as he hung an instant in the 
gangway — the only expression approaching intelligence that entered 
his face — and said, '‘"‘Malvina'' 

“ And, pray, where are you bound to, sir ?” 

“ Curagoa.” 

“Are you the owner, sir?” 

“ Captain,” he responded, with an emphatic nod ; and so saying, 
he put his foot on the ladder and entered his boat. 

Five minutes later we were breaking the seas afresh, making a more 
southerly course than was needful by two points, that we might give 
as wide a berth as soon as possible to the Dutch schooner, that, at 
the time I went below to dinner, was sliding away west-south-w'est a 
league distant under every cloth that she had to hoist. 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


219 


CliAPTER XIX. 

A MYSTERIOUS VOICE. 

This was an incident to give one a deal to think and talk about. 
Certainly little imaginable could be stranger than that we, being in 
chase of a fore-and-aft schooner-yacht, should fall in with a vessel 
so resembling the object of our pursuit as to deceive the sight of the 
men who professed to know the Shark well. I should have been 
glad to ask the Dutchman about his craft, yet it was a matter of no 
moment whatever. The thing had happened ; it was passing strange, 
and there was an end. Likely enough she was an English vessel 
purchased for some opulent trader in the island of Curayoa, and on 
her way to that possession in charge of the porpoise who had hon- 
ored us with a visit. The incident signified only as a disappoint- 
ment. All dinner-time I had been fretting over it, for since sunrise 
I had been thinking of the vessel ahead as the Shark; counted, in 
a sort of unreasoning, mechanical, silent way, upon capturing Lady 
Monson out of her, which, of course, would mean a shift of helm 
for us and home again. 

Wilfrid bore the blow better than I had dared to expect. He 
made a good dinner, for which he had the excuse of having fasted 
since breakfast, and broke into a noisy roar of laughter out of the 
air of gloomy resentment with which he had arrived from his cabin 
on my describing the Dutchman, and repeating his questions and my 
answers. In short, his weak mind came to his rescue. With the 
schooner had vanished an inspiration of thought that had served his 
intellect as an anchor to ride by. His imagination was now fluent 
again, loose, draining here and there like water on the decks of a 
rolling ship ; and though he spoke with vehement bitterness of his 
disappointment, and with indignation and rage even of Finn’s igno- 
rance in pursuing a stranger throughout the day, he dwelt very briefly 
at a time on the subject. Indeed, his talk was just an aimless stride 
from one thing to another. If he recurred to the Dutch schooner, 
it was as if by mere chance ; and, though the subject would blacken 
his mood, in a very short while he had passed on to other matters 
witli a cleared face. Miss Laura afterwards said to me that the strain 


220 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


of the day had been too great for him, and that when the tension 
was relaxed the strings of the instrument of his mind dropped into 
slack fibres, out of which his reason could fiddle but very little music. 
Well, I could have wished it thus for everybody’s sake. Better as 
it was than that he should have shrunk away scowling and hugging 
a dark mantle of madness to him, and exaggerated the abominably 
uncomfortable behavior I had witnessed all day. 

He arrived on deck after dinner to smoke a cigar, and while I sat 
with Miss Jennings — for it was a quiet night after the stormy blow- 
ing of the day, with a tropic tenderness of temperature in the sweet 
gushing of the southerly wind, the curl of moon gone, and the large 
stars trembling through the film of their own radiance like dew-drops 
in gossamer — I could hear my cousin chatting briskly near the wheel 
with Finn with intonations of voice that curiously proclaimed the 
variableness of his moods to the ear, sometimes speaking with heat, 
sometimes in a note of sullen expostulation, sometimes surprising 
the attention with a loud ha, ha, that came floating back again to 
the deck in echoes out of the silent canvas, while Finn’s deep sea- 
note rumbled a running commentary as the baronet talked. 

“ What do you think of this chase now ?” said I to Miss Laura. 

“ I wish it were over,” she answered. “ I want to see my sister 
rescued from the wretch she has run away with, Mr. Monson, but 
this sort of approaching her recovery is dreadful.” 

“It is worse than dreadful,” said I; “it is tedious with the threat 
of a neat little tragical complication by-and-by — any day, indeed — 
if Wilfrid doesn’t stow that gun in his hold or heave it overboard. 
The Dutchman might very well have answered our shot had he 
mounted a piece or two or driven alongside and plied us, as they 
used to say, with small-arms. Now, one isn’t here for that sort of 
thing, Miss Jennings.” 

“ No. Is there no way of losing the cannon ?” 

I laughed. “ If Wilfrid will reserve his fire until he is sure of the 
Shark, instead of blazing away at the first craft that resembles her, 
the weapon might yet prove something to usefull)^ serve. his turn; 
for I doubt if anything will hinder the colonel from cracking on 
when he catches sight of us short of iron messages from the fore- 
castle there. But we shall not meet with the Shark this side of the 
Cape, if there''* 

“ I fear it will prove a long voyage,” said she, with the sparkle of 
the starlight in her eyes. 

“You will be glad to return?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


221 


“ Not without my sister.” 

“But shall you be willing, Miss Jennings, supposing us to arrive 
at Cape Town without falling in with the Sharks to persevere in this 
very singular and unpromising sea quest ?” 

“ I will remain with Wilfrid, certainly,” she answered, quietly. 
“ My duty is to help him in this search, and where he goes I shall 
go.” 


“ But he will be acting cruelly to carry you on from the Cape un- 
less able to certainly tell where to find the fugitives, fixing the date, 
too, for that matter.” 

“ I see you will leave us at the Cape, Mr. Monson,” she exclaimed, 
with an accent that could only come from the movement of the lips 
in a smile. 

“ Not unless I prevail upon you to accompany me home,” said I. 

She shook her head lightly, but made no answer. Perhaps it was 
her silence that rendered me sensible of the unpremeditated signifi- 
cance of my speech. “ Well,” said I, lighting a second cigar, “ while 
you feel it your duty to stick to my cousin I shall feel it mine to 
stick to you. Not likely I should leave you alone with him.” 

At that instant the harsh, surly voice of old Jacob Crimp hailed 
the skipper, who still stood aft talking with Wilfrid. All was in 
darkness forward ; it was hard upon two bells ; the canvas rose as 
elusive to the eye in its wanness as a dim light in windy gloom far 
out at sea, and the shadow of it plunged a dye as opaque as blind- 
ness into the obscurity from the main -mast to the forecastle- rail, 
where the stars were sliding up and down like a dance of fire-fiies to 
the quiet lift and fall of the close-hauled yacht upon the invisible 
folds brimming to her port bow. 

“Capt’n!” sung out Crimp’s melodious voice — plaintive as the 
notes of a knife upon a revolving grindstone — from the heart of the 
murkiness somewhere near the galley. 

“ Holloa !” answered Finn. 

“ Can I speak a word with ye ?” 

“ Who is it wants me ?” 

“The mate.” 

“ Tell him to come aft,” Wilfrid bawled out. “ If there is any- 
thing wrong I must know it. Step aft. Crimp, step aft, d’ye hear?” 


he cried. 

Old Jacob’s stunted figure came out of the darkness, and walked 
along to where Finn stood. 

“What is the matter, I wonder?” said Miss Laura, 


222 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


I cocked my ear, for there is something in a hail of this sort at 
sea on a dark night to put an alertness into one’s instincts and nerves. 
Besides, there was no sounder snorer on board than old Jacob, and 
his merely coming up on deck during his watch below, though he 
should have stood mute as a ghost, was something to raise a little 
uneasy sense of expectation. His voice rumbled, but I could not 
hear what he said. Wilfrid shouted, “ What d’ye say ?” with an ex- 
pression of astonishment and incredulity. Finn laughed in a sneer- 
ing way, while old Jacob again rumbled out with some sentence. 
Then my cousin bawled out, “Charles, Charles, Come here, will you ?” 

“What the deuce is the matter now?''' said I, and Miss Laura fol- 
lowed me as I went over to the group. 

“ Here’s a nice pickle we’re in, Charles,” cried Wilfrid. “ What 
think you ? Crimp swears the yacht’s haunted.” 

“ So she be,” said Crimp. 

“ Pity your mother didn’t sell vinegar, Jacob, that you might 
have stayed at home to bottle it off,” exclaimed Finn. “ Haunted ! 
That may do for the marines, but you won’t get the sailors to be- 
lieve it.” 

“ That’s just what they do, then,” remarked Crimp. “ All the 
watch below have heard it, and can’t sleep in consequence.” 

“ Heard what ?” I asked. 

“The woice,” answered Jacob; “the same as you and me heard 
t’other night.” 

“Have you heard a voice, Charles?” exclaimed Wilfrid, suddenly 
fetching a deep breath. 

“ A mere fancy,” said I. 

“ Ye didn’t like it, anyhow,” said Crimp, gruffly, as though speak- 
ing aside. 

“ For God’s sake tell me about this voice, Charles,” cried Wilfrid, 
agitated all on a sudden, and restless as a dog-vane, with the twitch- 
ing of his figure and the shifting of his weight from one leg to 
another. 

I related the incident, making light of it, and tried to persuade 
him that the mere circumstance of my having said nothing about it 
proved that I regarded it as a deceit of the hearing. 

“ Did you know of this, Laura ?” said Wilfrid. 

“ As a joke only,” she answered. 

“ A joke,” cried he, breathing deep again. “ The voice sounded 
off the sea, hey ? and two of you heard it ? What did it say ?” and 
I could see him by the starlight looking towards the starboard 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


223 


quarter in the direction whence the syllables had floated to us. 
“ What did it say ?” he repeated. 

“ Why, that this here yacht was cussed,” rattled out Jacob, defi- 
antly ; “ and dum me if I don’t think she be, now that the bloomiriiy 
corpse belonging to the wreck is a-jawing and a-threatening of all 
hands down in the forepeak.” 

“ What is this man talking about?” I exclaimed, believing that he 
must either be drunk or cracked. 

“He’s come aft to tell us, Mr. Monson,” answered Finn, “that he 
and the others of the watch below have been disturbed by a woice 
in the hold saying that there’s a ghost aboard, and that the only 
way to get rid of him is to sail straight away home and end this 
woyage, which, saving the lady’s presence, it calls blarsted nonsense.” 

I observed old Jacob’s head vigorously nodding. 

“ You've heard the voice, too, Charles ?” said Wilfrid, flitting in 
short, agitated strides to and fro beside us. 

“Mr. Monson heard it twice,” growled Jacob; “off the wreck as 
well as off the quarter.” 

“ Speak when you’re spoken to,” cried Finn. “ Why, spit me, 
Mr. Monson, if it ain’t old Jacob’s grandmother as has signed on in- 
stead of Crimp himself.” 

“ Look here,” said Crimp, “ let them what disbelieves step for- 
rards and listen themselves.” 

“ Charles, inquire into this matter with Finn, will you ?” exclaimed 
Wilfrid. “ I — I — ” he stopped and passed his hand through Miss Jen- 
nings’s arm, then said, with a short, nervous laugh, “ The sound of a 
supernatural voice would cost me a night’s rest.” 

“ Come along, Finn,” said I. “ Come along. Crimp. If there be a 
ghost, as our friend here says,- he must promptly be laid by the heels 
and despatched to the Red Sea.” 

“What did ’ee want to go and tell Sir Wilfrid about that woice 
you and Mr. Monson heard t’other night?” grumbled Finn, as we 
moved forward into the darkness towards the forehatch. 

“’Cause it’s true,” answered Crimp, in his sullenest manner. 
“’Sides, it’s time to end this here galli wanting ramble, seems to me, 
if we’re going to be talked to and cursed by sperrits.” 

Finn made no answer. We arrived at the forehatch and descended. 
The Bride's forecastle was a large one for a vessel of her size. On 
either hand abaft was a small cabin partially bulkheaded off from 
the sailors’ sleeping-room, respectively occupied by Jacob Crimp and 
Cutbill. Whether the mate ate with the captain, whose berth was 


224 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


just forward of the one that had been occupied by Muffin, with ac- 
cess by means of a sliding-door to a small living-room through 
which he could pass into the forecastle, I cannot say. It was a 
rough scene to light upon after the elegance, glitter, and rich dyes 
of the fittings of our quarters aft, but the more picturesque for that 
quality as I found it now, at least on viewing the homely and coarse 
interior by the light of a small oil lamp of the shape of a block-tin 
coffee-pot, with a greasy sort of flame coming out of the spout, and 
burning darkly into a corkscrew of smoke that wound hot and ill- 
flavored to the upper-deck. There were bunks for the seamen, and 
two or three hammocks slung right forward; suits of oil-skins hung 
by nails against the stanchions, and swung to the motion of the ves- 
sel, like the bodies of suicides swayed by the wind. The deck was 
encumbered by sea-chests cleated or otherwise secured. Here and 
there glimmering through the twilight, in a bunk, I took notice of 
a little framed picture, a pipe-rack, with other odds and ends, trifling 
home memorials, and the artless conveniences with which poor Jack 
equips himself. There were seamen lying in their beds, a vision of 
leathery noses forking up out of a hedge of whisker, with bright 
wide-awake eyes that made one think of glowworms in a bird’s- 
nest; other equally hairy-faced figures in drawers and with naked 
feet, huge bare arms dark with moss and prickings in ink, sat with 
their legs over the edge of their bunks. It was with difficulty that 
I controlled ray gravity when on casting a hurried glance round the 
forecastle on entering it ray gaze lighted on the visage of Muffin, 
whose yellowness in the dull lamplight showed with the spectral 
hue of ashes. His bunk was well forward ; his bare legs hung from 
the edge like a couple of broomsticks; his hands were clasped; his 
head slightly on one side ; his posture one of alarm, amid which, 
however, there still lurked a native quality of valet-like sleekness, 
with a suggestion of a respectful apology for feeling nervous. Sweet 
as the Bride was, no doubt, as a pleasure vessel, compared with other 
craft of those times, the odor of this interior, improved as it was by 
the flaring snuff of the lamp, not to mention a decidedly warm night, 
was by no means of the most delicious. Added to this was the lift 
and fall of the yacht’s bows, which one felt here so strongly that, 
coming fresh from the tender heavings of the after-deck, you would 
have imagined a lively head-sea had sprung up on a sudden. That 
Muffin should have stood it astonished me. Sleeping as he did, 
right in the “eyes,” he got the very full of the motion. Besides, 
such an atmosphere as this must needs prove the severer as a bard- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


225 


ship after the luminous and flower-sweetened air of the cabin. Finn 
took a leisurely survey of the occupants of the bunks. 

*‘Well, lads,” said he, “ what’s the meaning of this here talk 
about a woice ? Mr. Crimp’s just come aft to tell me there’s some- 
what a-speaking underfoot here.” 

“That’s right, sir,” remarked Cutbill, who stood bolt-upright, like 
a sentry, in the entrance to his little berth. “ I beg your pardon, 
Mr. Monson, sir, but it’s nigh hand the same sort o’ speech as hailed 
us from the wreck.” 

“ ’Tis the same,” said a deep voice from one of the bunks. 

“ Rats !” quoth Finn, contemptuously. 

“ Never yet met with the rat as could damn a man’s eyes in Eng- 
lish,” grunted Crimp. 

“Nor in any other lingo, Mr. Crimp,” said a singular-looking sea- 
man, whose face I had before taken notice of as resembling the skin 
of an over-ripe lemon. He lay on the small of his back blinking at 
us, and his countenance in that light, that was rendered confusing 
by the sliding of shadows to the swing of the yacht, made one think 
of a melon half buried in a blanket. 

“Well, but see here, my lads,” exclaimed Finn, in a voice of ex- 
postulation, “what did this here woice say? Thais what I want to 
know. What did it say, men ?” 

“ I told ’ee,” growled Crimp. 

But old Jacob’s interpretation did not tally with that of the oth- 
ers. The sailors were generally agreed that the voice had exclaimed 
in effect that the yacht was cursed, and that their business was to 
make haste and sail her home ; but some had apparently heard more 
than others, while a few again manifestly embellished, with a notion, 
perhaps, of making the most of it ; but there could be no question 
whatever that human syllables, very plainly articulated, had sounded 
from out of the hold ; all hands were agreed as to that, and proof 
conclusive as to the sincerity of the men might have been found in 
the looks of them, one and all. 

“ Silence now !” cried Finn ; “ let’s listen.” 

We all strained our ears. Nothing broke the silence but the 
sulky wash of the sea outside, seething dully, the half-stifled respira- 
tions of the sailors, who found it difficult to control their hurricane 
lungs, and the familiar creaking noises breaking out in various parts 
of the fabric to her swayings. Impressed as I was by the agreement 
amons: the men — and I had come besides to this forecastle with the 
jnemory very fv?sh in TO? of the mysterious voices I hn.4 Ijefovn 


226 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


beard — I could scarcely bold my face as I stood listening, with my 
eye glancing from one bairy countenance to another. The variety of 
the Jacks’ postures, the knowing cock of a head here and there, the 
unwinking stare, the strained hearkening attitude, the illustration of 
superstitious emotions by expressions which were rendered grotesque 
by the swing of the lamp, the half-suffocated looks of some of the 
fellows who were trying to draw their breaths softly, formed a pict- 
ure to appeal irresistibly to one’s sense of the ridiculous. 

Three minutes passed ; it might have been hours, so long the time 
seemed. 

Seems it’s done jawing, whatever it is,” said Finn. 

We listened again. 

“ Tell ’ee it’s rats, lads,” said Finn. 

“ As the cuss was meant for this ’ere craft,” exclaimed the deep 
voice that had before spoken, “ perhaps if her owner was to come 
below, the sperrit, if so be it’s that, ud tarn to and talk out again.” 

“ Tell ’ee it’s rats !” cried Finn, scornfully. 

“ Rats !” exclaimed Crimp, with great irritation, “ if that’s all, why 
don’t Sir Wilfrid lay forrard and listen for hisself ?” 

“Won’t he come?” said one of the men. 

“ Come ! no,” rattled out Crimp, “and why ? ’Cause he knows it’s 
the truth.” 

“ Well,” exclaimed Cutbill, “ speaking with all proper respect, 
seems to me that what’s meat for the dawg ought to be meat for the 
man in the likes of such a humble-come-tumble out of the main-top 
into the main-hold sort o’ job as this.” 

There was now some grumbling. Crimp had enabled the men to 
guess that Wilfrid was afraid to enter the forecastle, and sundry sar- 
casms, with a mutinous touch in them, passed from bunk to bunk. 

“ Avast !” roared Finn : “ listen if he’ll speak now.” 

But no sound resembling a human syllable entered the stillness. 

“ It’s rats, I tell ’ee,” shouted the skipper, making to go on deck. 
“ Come along, Mr. Monson. Blamed now if I believe that Jacob is 
the only grandmother as has signed articles for this here woyage.” 

But as I followed him the exclamations I caught determined me 
on advising Wilfrid to come forward. He had left Miss Jennings 
standing alone at the rail and was walking swiftly here and there, 
with an irritability of gesture that was a sure symptom in him of a 
troubled and active imagination. On catching sight of me as I 
emerged out of the blind shadow on thp forvyard part of the yacht, 
he pried oqt, eagerly ; 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


227 


“ Well, what have you heard ? Is it a voice, Charles?” 

“There is nothing to hear,” I answered; “Finn disrespectfully 
calls it rats.” 

“What else, your honor?” exclaimed Finn; “the squeaking of 
rats ain’t unlike a sort o’ language. Put the noise they make along 
with the straining of bulkheads and the like of such sounds, and let 
the boiling be listened to by a parcel of ignorant sailors, and I allow 
ye’ll get what might be tarmed a supernatural woice.” 

Wilfrid burst into one of his great laughs, but immediately after 
said, in a grave and hollow tone, “ But you, Charles, have before heard 
something preternatural in the shape of a hail off yonder quarter, 
and from the dead man you found on the wreck.” 

“ Fancy, mere fancy,” I said. “ Gracious mercy ! am I making 
this voyage to carry home with me a belief in ghosts ? But I wish 
you’d go into the forecastle with Finn, Wilfrid, and listen for your- 
self. Make your mind easy ; there’s nothing to be heard. A visit 
from you will pacify the men. They hold that you admit the truth 
of what they allege by declining to satisfy yourself by listening. 
Their temper is not of the sweetest. They should be soothed, I 
think, when it is to be so easily done.” 

He hung in the wind, and said, in a hesitating way, “ What do 
you think, Finn ?” 

“ Well, Sir Wilfrid, since, as Mr. Monson says, there’s nothin’ to 
hear, and nothin’, therefore, to cause ye any agitation, I dorn’t doubt 
that a wisit from you would please the sailors and calm down their 
minds. I’m bound to say they’re oneasy — yes, I’m bound to say 
that.” 

“ Come, then,” cried my cousin ; and he strode impetuously into 
the darkness, followed by the skipper. 

I gave Miss Laura my arm, and we started on a little walk. The 
awning was furled, and the dew everywhere sparkled like hoar-frost. 
The quiet night wind sighed in the rigging, and the yacht, a point 
or two off her course, and every sheet flat aft, softly broke through 
the black, quiet waters with dull puffs of phosphor at times sneak- 
ing by like the eyes of secret shapes risen close to the surface to 
survey us. The sheen of the binnacle light touched a portion of the 
figure of the fellow at the wheel, and threw him and a segment of 
the circle whose spokes he held out upon the clear, fine, spangled 
dusk in phantasmal yellow outlines, dim as the impression left on 
the retina by an object when the eyelid is closed upon it. My fair 
companion and I talked of the incidents of the daj^. One thing wag 


228 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


following another rapidly, I said. ’Twas like a magic-lantern show ; 
scarcely had one picture faded out when something fresh was bright- 
ening in its room. 

“ What manner of sound could it be,’^ she asked, “that the sailors 
have interpreted into cursings and dreadful warnings?” 

“ It was no fancy on my part, anyway,” said I, “ let me put what 
face I will on it to Wilfrid. If what the men profess to hear be 
half as distinct as what / heard, there must be some kind of sorcery 
at work. I’ll swear.” 

I led her to the starboard quarter, where I had stood with Crimp, 
and repeated the story. The darkness gave my recital of the inci- 
dent the complexion it wanted ; a tremor passed through her hand 
into my arm. It was enough to make a very nightmare of the gloom, 
warm as it was with the dew-laden, southerly breathing, and delicate 
too with the small, fine light trembled into it by the stars, to think 
of a hail sounding out of it from a phantasm as shapeless as any dye 
of gloom upon the canvas of the night. Ten minutes passed ; I then 
discerned the figures of Wilfrid and Finn coming aft. My cousin’s 
deep breathing was audible when he was still at a distance. 

“ Well, what news?” I called, cheerily. 

Wilfrid drew close and exclaimed, “ It is true, I have heard it.” 

“Ha!” said I, turning upon Finn. 

“ By all that is blue, then, Mr. Monson, sir,” exclaimed the worthy 
fellow, “ there is somewhat a-talking below.” 

“ What does it say ?” asked Miss Jennings, showing herself all on 
a sudden thoroughly frightened. 

“ What I heard,” said Wilfrid, in his most raven note, “ was this : 
‘‘The yacht is cursed. Sail her home! Sail her homeP ” 

“ ’Twas as plain, Mr. Monson, as his honor’s own voice,” said Finn, 
in a profoundly despondent way. 

“ D’ye think, Finn,” said I, “ that it is a trick played off upon the 
crew by some skylarking son of a gun forward ?” 

His head wagged against the stars. “ I wish I could believe it, 
sir. The woice was underfoot. There’s nobody belonging to the 
ship there. There’s no man a-missing. ’Sides, ’tain’t a human 
woice. Never could ha’ believed it.” He pulled out his pocket- 
handkerchief and polished his brow. 

“ Well,” I exclaimed, “ so long as the thing, whatever it be, keeps 
forward — the deuce of it is. I’ve heard such sounds myself twice. 
It can’t be fancy, then. Yet, confound it all, Wilf, there can be 
nothing supernatural about it either. What is it ? Shall I explorq 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


229 


the yacht forward? Give me a lantern, and I’ll overhaul her to my 
own satisfaction anyway.” 

“You may set us on fire,” said Wilfrid; “let the matter rest for 
to-night. To-morrow, Finn, you can rummage the yacht.” He start- 
ed violently. “ Wh,at can it be, though ? Are we veritably haunted 
by the ghost of the Portuguese ?” He tried to laugh, but the dry- 
ness of the utterance seemed to half choke him. 

“ Well, let us wait for daylight, as you say,” cried I. 

“ I am going below for some seltzer and brandy,” said Wilfrid. 
“Finn, you may tell the steward to give the men a glass of grog 
apiece. What can it be?” he muttered, and his long figure then 
fiitted to the companion, through which he vanished. 

It was evident the thing had not yet had time to work in him. 
He was more astonished than terrified, but I guessed that supersti- 
tion would soon be active in him, and that there was a bad night 
before him of feverish imaginings and restless wandering. I could 
not have guessed how frightened Miss Jennings was until I conducted 
her below, shortly after Wilfrid had left the deck, where I was able 
to observe her scared white face, the bewildered expression in her 
eyes, and a dryness of her cherry underlip that kept her biting 
upon it. Her maid shared her berth, and I was mighty thankful to 
feel that the sweet creature had a companion. Indeed, had she 
been alone, one might have wagered that she would not have gone 
to bed that night. My cousin drank freely, but, for all that, a gloom 
of spirits settled upon him as slowly and surely as a fog thickens 
out the atmosphere and darkens down upon the view. He talked 
with heat and excitement of the strange voice at the first going off, 
but after a little he grew morose, absent-minded, with symptoms of 
temper that made me extremely weary, and I fetched a breath with 
a positive sigh of relief when he abruptly rose, bade us brusquely 
good-night, and went in long, melodramatic strides to his cabin. 

I did my best to inspirit Miss Jennings, but I was not very suc- 
cessful. It may be that I was more half-hearted in my manner of 
going to work than I was conscious of. It never could come to my 
telling her more than that we might be quite sure, if we could only 
solve the mystery of the sounds which had frightened all hands for- 
ward, and aft, too, for the matter of that, we should be heartily 
ashamed of our fears in the face of the abject commonplace of the 
disclosure. She shook her head. 

“ It might be as you say,” she said ; “ but if this strange voice 
continues to be heard — indeed, should it not speak again, and yet 


^30 


aN ocean tragedy. 


remain unriddled — what shall we think ? I am frightened, I own it. t 
do not believe in spirits, Mr. Monson, in haunting shadows, and other 
inventions of old nurses; but I cannot forget that you have heard 
such a voice as this twice — you who are so — so — ” 

“ Stupid,” said 1. 

“ Matter-of-fact, Mr. Monson.” 

But talking about the thing was not going to help her nerves. 
She went to bed at ten o’clock, and feeling too sleepy for a yarn 
with Finn, I withdrew to my cabin. I found myself a bit restless, 
however, when I came to put my head upon the pillow, and would 
catch myself listening, and sometimes I fancied I could hear a faint 
sound as of a person talking in a low voice. Then if was I would 
curse myself for a fool, and turn angrily in my bed. Yet for all 
that, I would fall a-listening again. It was quiet weather still, as it 
had been since sundown. In the blackness of my cabin, I could see 
a bright star sliding up and down the ebony of the glass of the 
scuttle, with a pause at intervals, when it would beam steadfastly 
and intelligently upon me as though it were a human eye. Now 
and again the water went away from the side in a stifled sob. I 
could have prayed for such another squall as I have described to 
burst upon us, for the life that would come to the spirit out of the 
lightning- flash, the roar of thunder, the shriek of wind, the fierce 
blow of the black surge, and the tempestuous hiss of its dissolving 
spume. I cudgelled my wits for a solution of the voice, but to no 
purpose. It was ridiculous to suppose that a man lay hidden below. 
For what sailor of the crew but would not be quickly missed? And 
then again I had but to consider to understand what I had not 
thought of on deck; I mean that even if a pair of hurricane lungs 
were secreted in the hold, it was scarce conceivable that their utmost 
volume of sound could penetrate through the thick, well-calked 
planking of the forecastle deck. 

At last I fell asleep. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


231 


CHAPTER XX. 

MUFFIN IS PUNISHED. 

It was seven o’clock when I awoke. I at once rose, bathed, and 
went on deck, thinking, as I passed through the cabin and observed 
the brilliant effect of the sunshine streaming through port-hole and 
skylight in rippling silver upon the shining bulkheads, the radiant 
lamps, the mirrors, rich carpet, and elegant draperies of the cabin, 
what a very insignificant figure a night fear cuts by daylight. The 
wind was north-east, a merry shining morning, with a wide blue 
heaven full of liquid lustre softened by many small white clouds 
blowing into the south-west, and rich as prisms with the rainbow 
lights that kindled in their skirts as they sailed past the sun. The 
firm line of the ocean went round the sky tenantless. The yacht 
was making good way, running smoothly over the crisping and 
crackling waters, and under an airy spread of studding-sail which 
trembled a light into the water far beyond her side. Finn was on 
deck, standing aft with his back upon the companion. I walked 
leisurely over to him, with vitality in the very last recesses of my 
being stirred by the exquisite sweetness and freshness of the long, 
pure sunlit gushing of the wind. 

“ Good-morning, Captain Finn.” He turned and touched his cap. 
“ How long is this delicious weather going to last, I wmnder ? Noth- 
ing in sight, eh ? Bless us, captain, when are we going to run the 
Shark into view ?” 

He looked at me with a curious expression which his smile, that 
was always in the middle of his face, rendered exceedingly odd, and 
said, “ Did ye hear anything like a mysterious woice, sir, last night 
after you’d turned in ?” 

“ I was for fancying,” I answered, “ that the atmosphere crawled 
with indistinguishable whispers. But I suppose without imagination 
there would be no lunatic asylums.” 

He said, preserving his odd look, “ The sperrit’s discovered, sir.” 

“ Gammon !” I exclaimed. 

“ Ay ! we’ve got hold of the woice !” he cried, gleefully. “ Did 
ye ever see a ghost, Mr. Monson, sir ? Look ! There's the corpse as 


232 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


belonged to the wreck, and there's the happarition as was a-curslng 
this yacht last night in the forepeak, and your honor may take it 
that there is the invisible shape whose hail from off yon quarter has 
given old Jacob the blues;” and all the time that he spoke he was 
pointing to the fore-rigging just under the cross-trees. 

I had before lightly glanced at a man up there, but had given him 
no heed whatever, as I supposed him to be a sailor at work. But 
now I looked again, shading my eyes. 

“ Muffin !” I cried, with a gasp of astonishment. “ Do you mean 
to say — ” and I veritably staggered as the full truth and absurdity 
of the thing rushed upon me. 

He hung in the rigging facing seaward, and there was turn upon 
turn of rope round his arms and legs ; indeed, he was as snugly 
secured to the shrouds as if he had been a sample of chafing-gear. 
The sailors had compassionately jammed his hat down on his head, 
and, in the shadow of the brim of it, his face looked of the sickly 
yellow hue of tallow. But he was too high to enable me to wit- 
ness the expression he wore. He had nothing on but his shirt and 
a pair of grimy duck trousers rolled to above his knees. 

“ What do you think of him as a sperrit, sir ?” cried Finn, with a 
loud, hoarse laugh, which caused the sailors at work forward to look 
up grinning at Muffin, who hung as motionless in the shrouds as if 
he lay in a faint there. 

“ How long has he been seized aloft ?” said I, with something of a 
pang coming to me out of the sight of him, for there followed close 
on my first emotion of astonishment a sort of admiration for the 
outlandish genius of the creature that worked in me like a feeling 
of pity. 

“ Since dawn,” answered Finn. “ The men put him where he is. 
I let ’em have their way. I was afeared they might have used him 
in an uglier fashion, sir. Jack don’t like to be made a fool of, your 
honor. Old Jacob, I am told, felt blood-thirsty. Ye see, ye can’t 
take a view of them sailors, ’specially such a chap as Cutbill, and 
think of ’em as lambs.” 

“ He must be an amazingly clever ventriloquist, though,” said I. 
“ Of course ! All’s as clear as daylight now. He was leaning over 
the rail when Crimp and I were talking on that night we heard the 
voice. I caught sight of him in the cabin a minute after the cry had 
sounded. The dexterous rogue ! he must have sneaked with amazing 
swiftness below. A consummate actor, indeed! How was he dis- 
covered ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


233 


“ Why,” answered Finn, with a slow shake of laughter, “ there’s 
a chap named Harry Blake as occupies the bunk just over him. 
Blake, like O’Connor, is an Irishman, with a skin as curdles to the 
thought of a ghost. He was more frightened than any other man 
forrards, and lay awake listening. Time passed : all the watch was 
snoring saving this here Blake. On a sudden he hears the woice. 
He sits up, all of a muck o’ sweat. Why, thinks he, it’s the mute 
as lies under me a-talking in his sleep ! He drops onto the deck 
and looks at Muffin, who presently fell a-talking again in his sleep, 
using the hidentical words that Sir Wilfrid had heard, and the tone 
o’ woice was the same, sort o’ muffied and dim like ; but it wasn’t 
pitched fit to make a scare, seeing, of course, that the hartist was 
unconscious. On this Blake sings out, kicks up a reg’lar hullabaloo, 
tells the men that the woice was a trick of Muffin’s. Muffin, being 
half dazed and terrified by the sailors crowding round his berth, 
threatening of him, confesses and says that he did it with the no- 
tion of terrifying Sir Wilfrid into returning home, as his life had 
growed a burden. The men then called a council to settle what 
should be done with him, and it ended, when daybreak come, in their 
seizing him up aloft, as ye see there, where they mean to keep him 
until I’ve consulted with Sir Wilfrid as to the sort of punishment 
the chap merits.” 

“ What shall you propose. Captain Finn ?” said I, with a glance at 
the bound figure, whose motionlessness made him seem lifeless, and 
whose posture, therefore, was not a little appealing. 

“ Sir,” answered Finn, “I shall recommend his honor to leave it to 
the men.” 

“ But they may hang him !” 

“ No ; I’ll see they stop short of that. But, Mr. Monson, sir, beg- 
ging your pardon, I’m sure you’ll allow with me that Muffin ’ll de- 
sarve all he’s likely to get. Speaking as master of this wessel, I say 
that if he hadn’t been found out in good time it might have gone 
blazing hard with all of us. The men were saucy enough last night, 
growling indeed as if it was next door to a mutiny being under way ; 
and yet it was the first time of the woice speaking in the hold. 
Imagine it going on for several nights ! It was bound to end in 
all hands giving up unless we shifted our helm for home, which Sir 
Wilfrid would never have consented to ; so there ye’d have had a 
quandary as bad as* if the sailors had been laid low with p’ison, or as 
if the Bride had tamed to and leaked at every butt end. Then 
think of his anointing his honor’s cabin with fiarning letters; all to 


234 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


sarve his own measly wish to git out of an ondertahing that he 
don’t relish. . . . Mr. Monson, sir, he wants a lesson, something arter 
the whipping and pickling business o’ my father’s day, and sooner 
than that he should miss of his desarts by striving to get to wind- 
ward of the soft side of his honor’s nature, I’m d d,” said he, 

striking his open hand with his clinched fist, “ if I wouldn’t up and 
tell Sir Wilfrid myself that it was that there MuflSn as wrote the 
shining words about his honor’s baby.” 

“ Best not do that,” said 1. “We want no tragedies aboard us, 
Finn. However, you may count upon my not interfering ; but for 
God’s sake let there be no brutality.” 

“ That’ll be all right, sir,” answered the skipper, with such a look, 
however, at the helpless and stirless figure in the rigging as satisfied 
me that his inclination, at present, at all events, was not towards 
mercy. 

It was not a sort of sight to make the deck a pleasant lounge till 
breakfast-time. I was moved by some compassion for the unfortu- 
nate creature, mainly due, I believe, to a secret admiration for his 
remarkable skill and dramatic cunning, and, understanding that the 
sooner Wilfrid was apprised of this business the sooner would Muf- 
fin be brought down out of the shrouds, I stepped below. The 
head-steward came out of my cousin’s cabin as I approached the 
door. 

“ Is Sir Wilfrid getting up ?” said I. 

“ I’ve just taken him his hot water, sir. He isn’t out of bed yet. 
He’s very heavy ; had a bad night. I’ve been told, sir — ” 

I passed on and knocked. 

“ W^hat is it ?” cried Wilfrid, in a drowsy, irritable voice. 

I entered, and said, “ Sorry to disturb you, Wilf, but there’s news 
that will interest you.” 

He started up. “The Shark?'" he cried. 

“ No,” I answered ; “ they’ve found out who talked like a ghost 
last night; who it was that whispered off the ocean to Crimp and 
me that this yacht was cursed, and who it was that made the corpse 
on the wreck hail us.” 

He sat bolt-upright, with eyes and nostrils large with excitement. 
“Who?” 

“ Muffin,” said I. 

“ Muffin !” he shouted ; “ what d’ye mean, Charles ?” 

“ Why, the fellow’s a ventriloquist, an incomparable artist,! should 
say, to deceive us all so atrociously well.” 


AK ocean tragedy. 


235 


lie stared at me with a face of dumb astonishment. “ What was 
his motive, think you ?” he asked, presently. 

“ He’s pining to get home,” I replied ; “ he’s capable of any 
tricks to achieve that end. The men mean to punish him, and Finn 
is waiting to confer with you on the subject. They’ve had him 
lashed to the rigging aloft since daybreak.” 

“ The scoundrel !” he cried, springing onto the deck, with a dark 
look of rage, yet with an indescribable note of relief as of a mind 
suddenly eased, softening the first harshness and temper of his voice. 
“ I have to thank him for a frightful night. What a fool I am,” he 
cried, vehemently striking his forehead, “ to suffer myself to be ter- 
rified by things which I ought to know — which I ought to know,” 
he repeated, with passionate emphasis, “cannot be as they seem.” 

“ Well, Wilf,” said I, “ you will find Finn on deck. He will tell 
you all about it, and you will leave the fellow’s punishment to the 
men, or settle with Finn the Sort of discipline the man deserves as 
you shall think proper. I wash my hands of the affair, satisfied 
with Finn’s promise that there shall be no brutality,” with which I 
left him and returned to my cabin, where I lay reading till the 
breakfast-bell rang. 

Miss Jennings was alone in the cabin. She stood with head in- 
clined over some flowers which still bloomed in the mould in which they 
had been brought from England. The sunshine of her hair blended 
with the pinks and whites of the petals, and the gems on her hands 
trembled like dew-drops on the leaves of the plants as she lightly 
touched them with fingers half caressing, half adjusting. Her look 
of astonishment when I told her that the voice we had heard was a 
trick of Muffin’s was like a view of her beauty in a new light; 
amazement, with a sparkle as of laughter behind it to throw out the 
expression, rounded her eyes and deepened their hue. Then the lit- 
tle creature clasped her hands with gratitude that the thing should 
have been discovered. 

“ Muffin is quite a rascal,” she said, “ and so clever as to be a real 
danger.” She could scarcely credit that he had skill enough to de- 
ceive the ear as he had. 

Wilfrid was slow in coming ; I could see him through the sky- 
light walking with Finn, gesticulating much, with a frequent look in 
the direction where, as I might gather. Master Muffin still hung. 
He kept Miss Laura and me waiting for nearly a quarter of an 
hour, during which I explained how Muffin had been discovered, 
how Wilfrid had gone on deck to arrange a punishment for him, 


S36 


AN OC£aN tragedy. 


and the like. Presently rny cousin arrived, and on catching sight 
of Miss Jennings, cried out, in his most boyish manner: “Only 
think, ray dear, that our superstitious alarms last night should be 
owing to a trick, but a deuced clever trick, of that illiterate, yellow- 
faced, tearful, half-cracked son of a green-grocer — MuflBn. I never 
could have believed he had it in him. Eh, Charles ? Mad, of course ; 
I don’t say dangerously so, but warped, you know, or is it likely 
that he would practise so cruel and dangerous a deceit merely be- 
cause he wants to get home? Why, d’ye know, Charles, Finn 
gravely swears that had the rascal persisted successfully for two or 
three nights, the yacht would have been in an uproar of mutiny, 
perhaps seized, ay, actually seized, through the terror of the crew, 
and sailed home — ending all my hopes.” 

“ How is he to be served ?” 

“ Finn proposes,” he answered, “ that the men should form a 
court — a judge and jury. Their decision will be brought aft for 
our approval. If the sentence be a reasonable one, the fellows wdll 
be allowed to execute it.” 

Miss Jennings looked scared. 

“ They won’t hurt him much,” said I. “ Finn has pledged his 
word to me. ’Tis the fright that will do him good. Is he out of 
the rigging, Wilf ?” 

“ Probably by this time,” he answered. “ I told Finn to get him sent 
down and fed. The sun is hot up there, and the poor devil faced it.” 

While we breakfasted I had much to say about the fellow’s singu- 
lar accomplishment as a ventriloquist; suggested that by-and-by he 
should be brought aft to entertain us, and expressed wonder that a 
man so gifted, qualified by nature, moreover, to dress up his singu- 
lar and special faculty with the airs of as theatrical a countenance 
as ever I had heard of, should be satisfied with the mean offices of a 
valet. But my flow of speech was presently checked by a change 
of mood in Wilfrid. His face darkened ; he pushed his plate from 
him, and let fly at Muffin in language which would not have been 
wanting in profanity, probably, had Miss Jenning.s been absent. 

“ Do you remember those strange warnings that I received about 
my little one?” he cried, turning a wild eye upon me. “After the 
gross deception of last night, who’s to tell me that I might not have 
been made a fool of in that, too ?” 

I shot a hurried glance of meaning and warning at Miss Jennings, 
and said, carelessly, “ Depend upon it, we can never be the victims 
of more than our senses in this life.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


237 


“ WIj y should the creature have left me to go forward ?” he 
shouted. 

I touched iny forehead with a smile. “ When you engaged this 
fellow,” said I, “ you supposed his brain healthy anyway. Now, my 
dear Wilf, the motive of this voyage supplies plenty of occupation 
to the mind, and there is excitement enough to be got out of it 
without the obligation of a lunatic to wait upon you.” 

He burst into a laugh, without, however, a hint of merriment in 
it, and then fell silent and most uncomfortably moody. Shortly af- 
terwards he went on deck. 

“ What will they do to Muffin, Mr. Monson, do you think ?” Miss 
Laura asked. 

“ I cannot imagine,” said I ; “ they may duck him from the yard- 
arm, they may spread-eagle and refresh him with a few dozens; 
punish him they will. Finn is hot against him. He is quite right 
in suggesting that a few such experiences as that of last night might 
— indeed must — have ended in a perilous mutiny. Are you coming 
on deck ?” 

“No.” 

“ But it is a beautiful morning. The breeze is as sweet as milk, 
and the clouds as radiant as though the angels were blowing soap- 
bubbles.” 

“ I do not care ; I shall remain in the cabin. Do you think I 
could witness a man being ducked or whipped ? I should faint.” 

“ Well, I will go and view the spectacle, so as to be able to give 
you the story of it.” 

She pouted, and cried : “ Wretched Muffin ! Why did Wilfrid 
bring him ? Lend me one of Scott’s novels, Mr. Monson. I cannot 
get on with that story about the nobility.” 

I was not a little surprised, on passing through the companion- 
hatch, to find that the first act of the drama was about to begin. 
The whole of the ship’s company, with the exception of the man 
who was at the wheel, were assembled on the forecastle. Crimp and 
Finn stood together near the fore-rigging, looking on. One of the 
sailors, who I afterwards learned was Cutbill, had pinned a blanket 
over his shoulders to serve him as a robe, while on his head he wore 
a contrivance that might have been a pudding-bag, though what it 
really was I could not distinguish. He had covered his chin and 
cheeks with a quantity of oakum, and presented a very extraordinary 
appearance as he sat with a great air of dignity on the top of a small 
Six sailors stoo4 wing-li^§ ^ithev h.mi of QOfi- 


238 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


stitiiting the jury, as I supposed. Confronting Cutbill was Muffin 
between two brawny salts, each of whom held him by the arm. The 
valet made a most melancholy figure, and even at the distance of the 
quarter-deck I could see his naked yellow shanks, his breeches being 
turned above the knees, quivering and yielding, till I began to think 
that the two sailors held him, not as a prisoner, but to prevent him 
from tumbling down. 

Wilfrid was swinging to and fro the quarter-deck, with long, 
flighty strides, taking an eager, probing, short-sighted stare at the 
crowd forward when he faced them, and then rounding to step aft, 
with a grin on his face and his underlip working as though he 
talked. 

“ I’m glad to see Cutbill making a fool of himself,” said I. “ Jack’s 
jinks are seldom dangerous when he introduces skylarking after the 
pattern of that fellow’s make-up. Shall we step forward and hear 
the trial, Wilf ?” 

“ No,” said he ; “ it would be undignified. Every man to the end 
he belongs to aboard a ship. Finn is there to see all fair. Besides, 
Muffin might appeal to me or to you, and I mean that the sailors 
shall have their way with him, providing, of course, that they don’t 
carry things too far.” 

“ Let’s sit, then,” said I ; “ your seven-league boots are too much 
for me this hot morning.” 

He called to the steward to bring him his pipe, and we posted 
ourselves on the grating abaft the wheel. It was a very gem of a 
picture just then. The canvas rose spreading on high in clouds of 
soft whiteness so silver-like to the burning of the sun that, viewed 
from a little distance, I don’t doubt they would have shone- upon the 
eye with the sparkle of crystal or the richer gleam of a pearl-in- 
crusted surface. The decks went forward pure as ivory, every shadow 
so sharp that it looked as though an artist had been at work upon 
the planks, counterfeiting the rigging and every curve of stirless 
cloth and all delicate interlacery of ratline and gear running cross- 
wise. The sea sloped in dark blue summer undulations, light as the 
rise and fall of the breast of a sleeping girl, into the liquid azure 
upon the starboard bow, where the steam-white clouds were gathered 
in a huddle like a great flock of sheep waiting for the rest that were 
on their way there to join them. The crowd on the forecastle filled 
that part of the vessel with color. It was the fuller of life for the 
coming and going of the shadows of the far-reaching studding-sails, 
and the marble-like arch of the flowing square-sail on the many dyes 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


239 


of the tough, knotted, bearded groups of faces, with heads of hair 
and wiry whiskers ranging from the blackness of the rook’s plumes 
to a pale straw-color, most of the beards wagging to the excited 
gnawing upon chunks of tobacco standing high in the cheek-bones, 
with here a wrinkled grin, there a sour cast, all combining to a pict- 
ure that I have but to close my eyes to witness bright and vivid 
again as though it were of yesterday. 

The trial was very decorously conducted. There were no jeers, 
no cries, no noise of any kind. I could hear the rumble of Cutbill’s 
deep sea notes, and once or twice Muffin’s response, faint as the 
squeak of a rat deep down. Crimp was called as a witness and de- 
claimed a bit, but nothing reached me save the sulky rasp of his 
voice. The fooling did not last long. Cutbill got on top of his cask 
to address the jury, and I saw the fellow at the wheel near us shak- 
ing his sides at the preposterous figure of the man as he hugged his 
blanket to his heart, gravely nodding with his pudding-bag first to 
the six men on his left, then to the six men on his right, while he 
delivered his charge. When this was ended Captain Finn, with a 
look aft, sang out at the top of his voice, so that we should hear him : 

“ Now, my lads, you who constitute the jury, what’s your vardict? 
Is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty ?” 

“ Guilty !” all twelve men roared out at once ; on which Cutbill, 
still erect on his cask, passed judgment. 

I strained my ear, but to no purpose. It was a monotonous rig- 
marole of a speech, and so long that I turned with a face of dismay 
to Wilfrid. 

“ I say, what are they going to do with him ? Why, Cutbill has 
said enough to include whipping, ducking, roasting, hanging, and 
quartering.” 

“ They only mean to frighten him,” he answered, looking anxious 
nevertheless. 

The two men who grasped Muffin walked him into the head, faced 
him round, and stood on either hand of him, still preserving their 
hold. Finn came aft, the men meanwhile hanging about him in a 
body forward in a posture of waiting. 

“ Well, what is decided on ?” cried Wilfrid, eagerly and nervously. 

Finn touched his cap. He tried to look grave, but secret enjoy- 
ment was visible in the twinkle of his eye, spite of the portentous 
curve of his mouth and the long drop of his chops to his chin-end. 

“ Your honor, the men’s vardict is that the prisoner’s to be cobbed 

and dncked.” 


240 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Cobbed !” cried Wilfrid, while I exclaimed “ Docked !” with a 
look at the foreyard-arm that stood high above the sea. 

“ Every man’ll give him a blow with a rope’s-end as he walks for- 
rard,” explained Finn, “ and arterwards cool him with a bucket o’ 
water apiece.” 

Wilfrid’s eyes came to mine. 

“ It will depend upon how hard every man hits,” said I ; “ the 
ducking is innocent enough. Yet I see nothing of cruelty in the 
sentence; and really the fellow not only requires to be punished, 
but to be terrified as well.” 

“ The hands are waiting for me to tell ’em to begin, your honor,” 
said Finn, with a glance forward. “ It’ll make the punishment too 
severe to keep the poor devil a-waiting for it.” 

“One moment,” exclaimed Wilfrid; “did he offer any excuses?” 

“ Why, sir, he said he was egged on with the desire to return to 
his mother and get off the sea, which disagrees with his insides and 
affects his hintellectuals. He says he meant no more harm than 
that. Don’t believe he did, but it might have ended in some smoth- 
ering trouble all the same. ‘ I came as a walet,’ says he, ‘ and here 
now am I,’ says he, ‘ broke — just a ship’s dog, a filthy scullion,’ says 
he, ‘ when my true calling,’ says he, ‘ is that of gentleman’s gentle- 
man.’ ” 

“ But, confound him !” cried Wilfrid, “ it was he who left me ; I 
did not dismiss him. He went forward of his own will.” 

“ My dear Wilfrid, he is cracked,” said I. 

“ Get on, get on and make an end of this now, Finn,” exclaimed 
Wilfrid, with a little color of temper in each cheek. “ I’m weary 
of the business, and want these decks cleared and quiet to the eye.” 

The skipper promptly trudged forward, and sung out as he ad- 
vanced. In a few moments most of the sailors had ranged them- 
selves along the deck in a double line. Every man held a piece of 
rope in his hand — reef points they looked to me, though whether 
they had been cut for this special business, or had been hunted for 
amid raffle of the kind forward, I cannot say. Meanwhile a couple 
of seamen handed buckets full of water along from a little pump in 
the head until every man had one at his feet. When these prepara- 
tions were completed the brace of salts who had charge of Muffin 
suddenly whipped off his shirt, and laid bare his back, so that he 
stood in nothing but a pair of breeches, a very radish of a figure — 
his yellow anatomy glancing dully in the sunshine, while the ghastly 
pallor of his face was heightened yet by his plaster of coal-blacl^ 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


241 


hair just t*c his inward terror was accentuated by the corkscrew-like 
writhing of his lean legs, the convulsive twitching of his arms, and 
the dismal rolling of his dead, black, lustreless eyes. It was impos- 
sible not to feel sorry for the wretched creature. One felt that he 
was entitled, by virtue of the remarkable gift he had displayed, to a 
discipline of a more dignified sort than he was now to be subjected 
to. I laughed out, however, when Cutbill formed a procession. Ab- 
surdity could not have gone beyond the figure the great whiskered 
tarpaulin cut in his blanket and the canvas bag that served him as 
head-gear as, making a sign, he tragically entered the double line of 
men, beating with his hands that MuflSn and his two supporters 
should keep time with his strides. When Muffin was brought to the 
aftermost end of the rank of seamen Cutbill seized him by the neck 
and forced him to give us a bow. The two sailors who had con- 
ducted him to this point then posted themselves with the others, 
each of them picking up a rope’s-end, whereupon Cutbill, twisting 
Muffin so as to force him to face the vessel’s forecastle, took a couple 
of strides backward, extending his arms under his blanket to hinder 
Muffin from running forward. 

“ Lay on now !” he hoarsely bawled ; and then whack ! whack ! 
whack ! sounded upon the unhappy Muffin’s spine as rhythmically as 
the tapping of a land-crab’s claws upon a polished fioor. Every fel- 
low’ administered his single blow with a will, one or two spitting on 
their hands before their turn came. The sufferer writhed pitifully 
to the very first stroke, and to the fourth howled out like a dog. 
The sight half - sickened me, and yet I found myself laughing — 
though, I dare say, there was something of hysteric nervousness in 
my merriment — at the preposterous spectacle of the staggering, 
twitching, dodging, almost nude figure of Muffin, throwing out into 
strong relief the huge blanketed form of Cutbill, who, with arms dis- 
tended, his head with its adornment of oakum nodding gravely from 
side to side as if bestowing approbation on each man for the blow 
he dealt, strode backward on majestic legs, carefully turning out his 
toes as though he were giving Muffin a lesson in dancing, and slid- 
ing along the lines of knotted, hairy faces with the air of some court 
functionary marshalling the progress of royalty. 

As the echo of the last whack rose hollowly off Muffin’s back, the 
skin of which was unbroken, though it was barred with white lines 
that resembled flakes of peeled onion, Cutbill whirled him round 
again, choking the yell he was in the act of delivering into a moan, 
and ran him back to where he had first started. The ropes’-ends 
16 


242 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


were now dropped; every man seized his bucket, and as Muffin 
moved, slowly confronted as before by Cutbill, who barricaded the 
way with out-stretched arms, striding backward once again with Cape 
Horn graces, he received a deluge full in his face, one after another, 
till I thought the very breath would have been washed out of his body. 

“ Now cut down below and dry and clothe yourself,” roared Finn, 
as the last bucket was emptied over the shivering creature, “and the 
next time, my lad, ye try any of your pranks upon e’er a man aboard 
this wessel, whether he lives forward or whether he lives aft, we’ll 
send ye aloft to that yard-arm there with a rope found your neck.” 

Cutbill whipped off his blanket and tore the oakum and cap off 
his head. In a few brief moments the decks resounded with the 
slapping of sailors swabbing up the wet ; buckets were stowed away 
in their places, the ropes’-ends collected, and in an incredibly short 
space of time all was as though no such incident as I have related 
had happened, the planks drying fast, some seamen aft spreading 
the awning, other fellows at their several jobs in the rigging or on 
deck, just a grin now and again passing among them, but no laughter 
and no talk, and the yacht softly pushing forward under the increas- 
ing glory of the sun fast approaching his meridian. 

“ We shall hear no more of Muffin, I think,” said Wilfrid, showing 
nothing of the excitement I had expected to find in him. 

“No,” said I, with a yawn, and sickened somewhat by the business 
that had just ended, “ but all this sort of business doesn’t look like 
the errand that has brought us out onto the face of these broad 
waters.” 

“Ay,” said he, “but that errand was in jeopardy until this morning.” 

He went to the rail and took a long, thirsty look ahead. I waited, 
thinking he meant to return. Instead, he folded his arms and con- 
tinued gazing, motionless, with eyes so intently fixed that I took a 
look too, conceiving that he beheld something to fix his attention. 
A strange expression of surprise entered his face, his brow lightened, 
an air of eagerness sharpened his visage. ’Twas as likely as not that 
he saw with his mind’s eye what he craved to behold in reality, and 
that the vision a sudden craze had raised up before him was as actual 
to his tainted imagination as if it lay bright to all hands upon the 
sea-line. But I felt wearied to the heart, sick as from a sort of 
ground-swell of emotion. The mere sight of Wilfrid’s posture and 
face was enough to increase the fit of the blues upon me just then, 
and I quietly slipped below for such sunny influence as was to be 
got out of the presence of the sweet little woman in the cabin. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


243 


CHAPTER XXI. 

HEAVY WEATHER. 

After this, for a good many days nothing in any degree note- 
worthy happened. It seemed, indeed, as though whatever little 
there was to alarm or divert during this extraordinary voyage had 
been packed into the beginning of it. Muffin lay ill of his back for 
two days in his bunk ; but for Wilfrid, Finn would have had the 
poor devil up and about within an hour of drying and dressing him- 
self. The skipper could not forgive that menace of mutiny which 
had been involved in the yellow-faced joker’s effort to procure the 
shifting of the yacht’s helm for home, and he would always refer 
privately to me with violent indignation to the valet’s trick upon his 
master. But on Wilfrid’s hearing that the man was in pain, and 
that his nerves had been prostrated by the punishment, he ordered 
Finn to let him remain below until he was better or well. There 
was no more ventriloquism ; the midnight silence of the forecastle 
was left unvexed by muffled imprecations. The sailors, when Muf- 
fin left his bunk, asked him to give them an entertainment, to which 
he replied by saying he would see them in a nameless place first. 
The request, indeed, maddened him. I gathered from sullen Crimp’s 
sour version of the incident that Muffin shrieked at the men, shook 
his fist at them, his eyes started half out of his head, the foam gath- 
ered upon his lips, and he heaped curses and oaths of a nature so 
novel, so unimaginable, indeed, upon them, that the stoutest shrunk 
back from the screaming creature, believing him to be raving mad. 
However, he behaved himself very quietly on deck. I never caught 
him looking our way nor speaking, nor heard him again singing in 
a dog-watch in his woman’s voice. Life grew so tedious that I 
should have been glad to see him aft again for the sake of his parts 
as a mimic and actor. I was certain the man would have contrived 
a very good entertainment for us night after night ; but Wilfrid 
said no angrily and obstinately once and for all, and so the subject 
dropped. 

The north-east trades blew a fresh breeze, and bowled us hand- 
somely athwart the broad blue field of the Atlantic, The Bnde wj^s 


244 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


a noble sailer when she had the chance, and some of our runs rose 
to three hundred miles in the twenty-four hours, with a hill of snow 
at either bow, and the frothing surge of the trades chasing us, and 
a sensible increase of heat day after day in the loud and shrilling 
sweep of air and the glitter of flying-fish sparkling on wings of 
gauze from the white and gold of our vessel’s shearing passage. We 
had entered the tropics, but had met with no ship that we could 
speak. At times a sail shone, but always afar.. The lookout aloft 
was as steadfast as the rising and sinking of the sun. Day after 
day the polished tube up there was sweeping the glass-like sapphire 
of the ocean boundary, steadily circling the firm line of it steeping 
from either quarter to ahead. But the cry of “ Sail, ho !” delivered 
at long intervals never resulted in more than the disclosure of a rig 
of a very different pattern from what we were in pursuit of. 

A settled gloom fell upon my cousin’s spirits. He complained of 
sleeplessness ; his appetite failed him ; he talked but little, and his 
one subject was the Shark. I would sometimes long for a startling 
incident to shake him out of the melancholy that sat darkly as the 
shadow of madness upon him. Miss Jennings tried hard to keep up 
her heart, but already I could see that the monotony of the voyage, 
coupled with an incessant strain of expectation, was proving too 
much for her. She had come to this strange quest taking my cous- 
in’s word for what was to happen. She had given Wilfrid’s pro- 
gramme of hopes no consideration. We were bound to fall in with 
the Shark at sea, or, at the very worst, to arrive at the Cape before 
her, and there lie in wait. She was finding out now that the ocean 
was the prodigious plain I had represented it for a pursuit of this kind, 
and that the journey had already grown infinitely tedious, though Ta- 
ble Bay lay some thousands of miles distant yet. Still, she stuck to 
her guns manfully. Her heart would show in her eyes when she 
thought herself unobserved ; but if ever I approached the subject in 
conversing with her on the vagueness and vanity of this pursuit, she 
would tell me that it was idle to talk, that she had made up her 
mind, that she had cast in her lot with Wilfrid in this chase, and 
that while he continued to pursue his wife, no matter to what part 
of the world he might direct Finn to steer the vessel, she would re- 
main at his side. 

“ Should I ever forgive myself, do you think, Mr. Monson,” she 
would argue, “if after I had left him Wilfrid found Henrietta, and 
she refused to return with him for lack, perhaps, of the influence I 
should be able to exert ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


245 


“ Ay, but do not you suppose too much ?” I would answer. ^'‘Per- 
haps Wilfrid might fall in with his wife ; perhaps she might decline 
to have anything to do with him ; perhaps if you were present she 
might yield to your entreaties. As my sympathies are not so deep- 
ly concerned as yours, I am able, possibly, to take more practical 
views. The one staggering consideration with me is this : we arrive 
at Table Bay and find the Shark has sailed and there is nobody to 
tell us where she has gone. Figure our outlook then !” 

“ But you are supposing, too. The Shark may arrive while we 
are lying in Table Bay. What then, Mr. Monson ?” 

It was idle talk, though to her “ what then ?” I might have replied 
by another question : “ If Lady Monson, at Table Bay, should de- 
cline to allow her husband to carry her home in his yacht, what 
then 

It must have fared hard with me, I think, but for this girl ; for had 
I had during this journey no other companion than Wilfrid, likely 
as not it would have ended in my carrying “ a bee in my bonnet ” 
for the rest of my days. Between us we managed to kill fhany te- 
dious hours with cards, chess, chats, reading aloud, while Wilfrid lay 
hid in God knows what mysterious occupation in his cabin, or paced 
the deck alone, austere, unapproachable, with an iron sneer on his 
lip, and on his brow the scowl of a dark mood out of which you 
might have looked to see him burst into some wild, unreasoning 
piece of behavior, some swearing fit, or insane soliloquy — one knew 
not what; only that the air of him held you restless with expecta- 
tion of trouble in that way. 

The night-time was the fairest part of this queer trip when we got 
under the tropic heights, with failing breezes, hot and moist, soft- 
running surges languidly gushing into a sheet-lightning of phos- 
phoric froth, a full moon that at her meridian came near to the 
brilliance of sunrise, the planets large, trembling, and of heavenly 
beauty, a streak of dim fire in the dark water over the counter de- 
noting the subtle, sneaking pursuit of some huge fish ; and refiec- 
tions of white stars like , dim water-lilies riding the polished ebony 
heave when it ran foamless. Evening after evening on such nights 
as these would Miss Laura and I placidly step the deck together or 
sit watching the exquisite effects of moonlight on sail and cordage ; 
or the rising of the luminary above the black rim of ocean, with the 
tremble of the water in its light as though the deep thrilled to the 
first kiss of the moonbeams ; gliding from one romantic fancy to 
another as tenderly as our keel floated over the long-drawn respira- 


246 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


tions of the deep. Indeed, it would come sometimes to my think- 
ing that if the Bride were my yacht, and Laura and I alone in her 
— with a crew to navigate the craft, to be sure — I should be very 
well satisfied to go on sailing about in this fashion in these latitudes 
under those glorious stars and upon these warm and gentle seas un- 
til she tired. In its serene moonlit moods the ocean possesses an 
incomparable and amazing magic of spiritualizing. The veriest 
commonplace glows into poetic beauty under the mysterious, vital- 
izing, enriching infiuence. I have seen a girl whom no exaggerated 
courtesy could have pronounced comely by daylight, show like an 
angel on the deck of a yacht on a hushed and radiant night, when 
the air has been brimming to the stars with the soft haze of moon- 
light, and when the sea has resembled a carpet of black silk softly 
waving. The moon is a witch, and her pencils of light are charged 
with magic qualities. In the soft golden effulgence ray companion’s 
face would sometimes grow phantasmal, a dream of girlish loveli- 
ness, the radiance of her hair and skin blending with the rich illusive 
light tili I would sometimes think if I should glance away from her 
and then look again, I should find her fairy countenance melted — a 
romantic confession that tells the story of my heart ! Yes, I was 
far gone : no need to deny it. Our association was intimate to a 
degree that no companionship ashore could approach. Wilfrid left 
us alone together for hour after hour, and there was nobody to in- 
trude upon us. Finn clearly understood what was happening, and 
sour old Crimp was always careful to leave us one side of the deck 
to ourselves. 

But there was now to happen a violent change — a transformation 
of peaceful, amorous conditions of the right kind to affright ro- 
mance and to drive the spirit of poetry cowering out of sight. 

We were in latitude about eight degrees north; the longitude I 
do not remember. The night had been very quiet but thick; here 
and there a star that was a mere lustreless blur in the void, and the 
water black and sluggish as liquid pitch without a gleam in it. The 
atmosphere had been so sultry that I could get no rest. The yacht 
dipped drearily from side to side, shaking thunder out of her canvas 
and sending a sound, like a low sobbing wail, bff her sides into the 
midnight gloom. This prevented me from opening the scuttle, and 
I lay half stified, occasionally driven on deck by a sense of suffoca- 
tion, though it was like passing from one hot room to another in a 
Turkish bath. There was a barometer in the cabin just under the 
clock in the skylight; every time I quitted my berth I peeped at it. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


247 


and every time I looked I observed that the mercury had settled 
somewhat, a very gradual, but a very steady fall. That foul weather 
was at hand I could not doubt, but it was hard to imagine the 
character it would take down among these equatorial parallels, where 
one hardly looks for gales of wind, or cyclonic outbursts, or the 
rushing tempest red with lightning of high latitudes ; though every 
man who has crossed the line will know that the ocean is as full of 
the unexpected thereabouts as in all other parts of the globe. 

I somehow have a clearer recollection of that night than of the 
time that followed, or indeed of any other passage of hours during 
this queer sea ramble I am writing about. It was first the intoler- 
able heat, then the unendurably monotonous lifeless rolling of the 
yacht, with its regular accompaniment of the yearning wash of re- 
coiling waters, the ceaseless and irritating clicking of cabin doors 
upon their hooks, the idle beating of canvas above, hollowly pene- 
trating the deck with a muffled echo as of constant sullen explosions, 
the creaking and straining to right and to left and above and below, 
a hot smell of paint and varnish and upholstery mingled with some 
sort of indefinable marine odor; a kind of faint scent of rotting sea- 
weed, such as will sometimes rise off the breast of the sluggish deep 
when stormy weather is at hand. I believe I drank not less than 
one dozen bottles of seltzer-water in the small hours. I was half 
dead of thirst, and routed out the steward and obliged him to sup- 
ply me with a plentiful stock of this refreshment. But the more I 
drank the hotter I got, and no shipwrecked eye ever more gratefully 
saluted the gray of dawn than did mine, when, wakening from a 
half-hour of feverish sleep, I beheld the light of morning lying weak 
and lead-colored on the glass of the port-hole. 

An uglier jumble of sky I never beheld when I sent my first look 
up to it from the companion-hatch. It was as though some hun- 
dreds and thousands of factory chimneys had been vomiting up 
their black fumes throughout the night, the bodies of vapor coming 
together over our mast-heads and compacting there lumpishly amid 
the stagnant air with the livid thickenings dimming into dusky 
browns ; and here and there a sallow lump of gloom of the kind of 
yellowish tinge to make one think of fire and thunder. The con- 
fines of this ghastly storm-laden pall drooped to the sea within three 
miles of the yacht, so that the horizon seemed within cannon-shot 
— a merging and mingling of stationary shadows whose stirlessness 
was rendered the more portentous by the sulky pease-soup colored 
welter of the ocean washing into the shrouded distance and vanish- 


248 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


ing tliere. All hands were on the alert. What was to come Finn 
told me he could not tell, but he was ready for it. His maintop- 
mast was struck — that is, sent down on deck ; he had also sent 
down the top-gallant yard. Every stitch of canvas was furled, sav- 
ing the close-reefed gaff-foresail and the reefed stay-foresail. Extra 
lashings secured everything that was movable. Much to my satis- 
faction, I observed that he had struck the long gun forward down 
below. There was not a breath of wind as yet, and the yacht looked 
most forlorn and naked, as though indeed she were fresh from a fu- 
rious tussle as she rolled, burying her sides upon the southerly swell, 
that was growing heavier and heavier hour by hour. 

We were at breakfast when the first of the wind took us. It 
came along moaning at first, with a small dying away, and then a 
longer wail as it poured, hot as the breath of a furnace blast, be- 
tween our masts. This was followed by some five minutes of breath- 
less calm, during which the yacht fell off into the trough again ; 
then, having my eye upon a cabin window, I bawled out, “ There it 
comes !” seeing the flying white line of it like a cloud of desert sand 
sweeping through the evening dusk; and before the words were well 
out of my mouth the yacht was down to it, bowed to her bulwark- 
rail, every blessed article on the breakfast-table fetching away with 
a hideous crash upon the deck, with the figures of the two stewards 
reeling to leeward, myself gripping the table, Wilfrid depending 
wholly for support upon his fixed chair, and Miss Jennings buoying 
herself off to windward upon her out-stretched arms, with her face 
white with consternation. 

The uproar is not to be described. The voice of the gale bellow- 
ing through the gloom was a continuous note of thunder, and trem- 
bled upon the ear for all the world as though it was the cannonading 
of some fierce electric storm. The boiling and hissing of the seas 
made one think of a sky full of water falling into the ocean. The 
yacht at the first going on was beaten down to her broadside and 
lay motionless, the froth washing over the rail; and the horror of 
that posture of seemingly drowning prostration, together with the 
fears it put into one, was prodigiously increased by the heavy blows 
of seas smiting the round of the hull to windward and bursting over 
her in vast bodies of snow. But she was a noble sea-boat, and was 
soon gallantly breasting the surge, but with a dance that rapidly 
grew wilder and wilder as the tempestuous music on high rang out 
more fiercely yet, until it became absolutely impossible to use one’s 
legs. The sea rose as if by magic, and the slide of the hull down 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


249 


the liquid heights, which came roaring at her from a very smother 
of scud and vapor and flying spray, gave her such a heel that every 
recovery of her for the next buoyant upward flight was a miracle of 
resurrection in its way. The hatches were battened down, tarpaulins 
over the skylight, and as for some time the stewards were unable to 
light the lamp, we remained seated in the cabin in a gloom so deep 
that we could scarcely discern one another’s faces. Off the cabin 
deck rose a miserable jangling and clatter of broken crockery and 
glass and the like, rolling to and fro with the violent movements of 
the yacht. For a long while the stewards were rendered helpless. 
They swung by stanchions or held on grimly to seats, and it was in- 
deed as much as their lives were worth to let go, for there were mo- 
ments when the decks sloped like the steep roof of a house, promis- 
ing a headlong fall to any one who relaxed his grip of a sort to 
break his neck or beat his brains out. At regular intervals the cabin 
port-holes would turn blind to a thunderous rush of green sea, and 
those were moments, I vow, to drive a man onto his knees with 
full conviction that he would be giving up the ghost in a very little 
while ; for to these darkening, glimmering, green delugings the cabin 
interior turned a dead black, as though it were midnight ; down lay 
the yacht to the mighty sweeping curl of water ; a shock as of the 
discharge of heavy artillery trembled with a stunning effect right 
through her to the blows of the tons upon tons of water which 
burst over the rail to the height of the cross-trees, falling upon the 
resounding deck from that elevation with a crash that made one 
think of the fabric having struck, followed by a distracting sound 
of seething as the deluge, flung from side to side, boiled between 
the bulwarks. 

We had met with a few dustings before we fell in with this tem- 
pest, but nothing to season us for such an encounter as this. I 
made an effort after two hours of it to scramble on all fours up the 
cabin ladder and to put my head out through one of the companion 
doors. Such was the power of the wind that to the first protrusion 
of my nose I felt as if my face had been cut off as by a knife and 
swept overboard. The hurricane was as hot as though charged with 
fire ; the clouds of foam blown off the sea and whirling hoarily un- 
der the black vapor low down above our mast-heads looked like 
steam boiling up off the hissing surface of the mighty ocean cal- 
dron. I caught sight of a couple of fellows lashed to the wheel, and 
the figure of Finn glittering in black oil-skins crouching aft under 
the lee of the bulwark, swinging to a rope’s-end round his waist; 


250 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


but all forward was haze, storms of foam, a glimpse of the yacht’s 
bows soaring black and streaming, then striking down madly into a 
very hell of white waters which leaped upward to the smiting of the 
structure in marble-like columns, round, firm, brilliant, like the stem 
of a water-spout, but with heads which instantly vanished in a smoke 
of crystals before the shriek and thunder of the blast. The frag- 
ment of gaff-foresail held bravely, dark with brine from peak to 
clew, with a furious salival draining of wet from the foot of it out 
of the hollow into which there was a ceaseless mad hurling of water. 

Heaven preserve me ! never could I have imagined such a sight 
as that sea presented. It might well have scared the heart of a far 
bolder man than ever I professed to be to witness the height and 
arching of the great liquid acclivities with their rage of boiling sum- 
mits; the dusk of the atmosphere darkened yet by the flying rain 
of spume torn by the fingers of the storm out of the maddened wa- 
ters ; the ghastliness of the dissolving mountains of whiteness glar- 
ing out into the wet and leaden shadow ; the leaping of the near 
horizon against the thick gloom that looked to whirl like a teeto- 
tum, mingling scud and foam and hurtling billow into a sickening 
confusion of phantasmal shapes, a mad, chaotic blending of vanish- 
ing and reappearing forms timed by the yell and hum of the gale 
sounding high above the crash of the breaking surge, and the shat- 
tering of wave by wave as though in very truth it fetched an echo 
of its own deafening roaring out of the dark sky rushing low over 
this tremendous scene of commotion. 

Whatever it might be that blew, whether a straight-lined hurri- 
cane or some wing of rotating storm, it lasted for three days ; not, 
indeed, continuing the terrible severity with which it had set in, for 
we all afterwards agreed that a few hours of the weight of tempest 
that had first sprung upon us must have beaten the yacht down to 
her grave by mere blows of green seas, let alone the addition of the 
incalculable pressure of the wind. The stay-foresail in one blast that 
caught the yacht when topping a sea was blown into rags, and 
whirled up into the dusk like smoke. A fragment of head-sail was 
wanted, but while some men were clawing forward to effect what 
was necessary, the vessel shipped a sea that carried three of them 
overboard like chips of wood, leaving the fourth stranded in the 
scuppers as far aft as the gangway, with his neck and both legs bro- 
ken ! We were but a small ship, and luxurious fittings counted for 
nothing in such a hellish tumblefication as that. Wilfrid kept his 
berth nearly the whole time, having slightly sprained his ankle, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


251 


which, topped by the motion, prohibited him from extending his 
leg by so much as a single stride. On the other hand. Miss Laura 
would not leave the cabin. I endeavored to persuade her to take 
some rest iu her bunk, but to no purpose. I did what I could to 
make her comfortable, crawled like a rat to her berth, where I found 
her maid half dead with fright and nausea, procured a pillow, rugs, 
and so forth, got her over to the lee side, where there was not much 
risk of her rolling off the sofa, and snugged her to the best of my 
ability. I sat with her constantly, said what I could to keep her spirits 
up, procured food for her, fell asleep at her side holding her hand, 
saw to her maid, and, in a word, acted the part of a devoted lover. 
But Heaven bless us, what a time it was! I would sometimes won- 
der whether, if the Shark met with this gale, she had seaworthi- 
ness enough to outlive it. Occasionally Finn would arrive, haggard, 
streaming, the completest figure imaginable of a tempest-beaten man, 
and report of matters above ; but I remember wishing him at the 
devil when he told us of the loss of the four men, for a more de- 
pressing piece of ‘news could not have reached us at such a time, 
and Miss Laura’s spirits seemed to utterly break down under it. It 
was impossible to light the galley fire, and we had to subsist upon 
the remains of past cookery and on tinned food. However, Finn 
told us that on the evening of the first day of the gale the cook had 
fallen and broken two fingers of his right hand ; so that could a fire 
have been kindled there was no one to prepare a hot meal for us. 

But a little before eleven o’clock on the night of the third day 
the gale broke. I was sitting alongside of Miss Jennings in the 
cabin, with a plate of biscuit and ham on my knee off which she 
and I were making a lover’s meal, I popping little pieces into her 
mouth as she lay pillowed close against my arm, then taking a snack 
myself, then applying a flask of sherry to her lips and finding the 
wine transformed into nectar by her kiss of the silver mouth of the 
flask. A steward sat crouching in the corner of the cabin ; the 
lamp burned dimly, for there had been some diflSculty in obtaining 
oil for it, and the mesh was therefore kept low. Suddenly I wit- 
nessed a flash of yellow moonshine upon the port-hole directly fac- 
ing me, and with a shout of exultation I sprang to my feet, giving 
no heed to the plate that fell in a crash upon the deck, and crying 
out, “Thank God, here’s fine weather coming at last!” I made a 
spring to the companion-steps and hauled myself up through the 
hatch. 

It was a sight I would not have missed witnessing for much. The 


252 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


moon at that instant had swept into a clear space of indigo-black 
heaven ; her light flashed fair upon the vast desolation of swollen 
waters ; every foaming head of sea glanced with an ivory whiteness 
that by contrast with the black welter upon which it broke showed 
with something of the glory of crystalline snow beheld in sunlight; 
the clouds had broken and were sailing across'the sky in dense dark 
masses ; it still blew violently, but there was a deep peculiar note 
in the roar of the wind aloft, which w'as assurance positive to a 
nautical ear that the strength of the gale was exhausted, just as in a 
humming-top the tone lowers and lowers yet as the thing slackens 
its revolutions. By one o’clock that morning it was no more than 
a moderate breeze with a high angry swell, of which, however, Finn 
made nothing ; for after escorting Miss Jennings to her cabin I 
heard them making sail on deck ; and when, having had a short 
chat with Wilfrid, who lay in his bunk earnestly thanking God that 
the weather had mended, I went on deck to take a last look round 
before turning in, I found the wind shifted to west-north-west, and 
the Bride swarming and plunging over the strong southerly swell 
under a whole main-sail, gaff-foresail, and jib, with hands sheeting 
home the square top-sail. Crimp singing out in the waist, and Finn 
making a sailor’s supper off a ship’s biscuit in one hand and a cube 
of salt junk in the other by the light of the moon. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


253 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE “’lIZA ROBBINS.” 

The gale was followed by several days of true tropical weather : 
light airs, before which our stern slided so softly as to leave the 
water un wrinkled ; then pauses of utter stagnation, with the horizon 
slowly waving in the roasting atmosphere, as if it were some huge 
snake winding round and round the sea, and our mast-heads wriggling 
up into the brassy blue like the points of rotating corkscrews. 

I rose one morning early, loathing the narrow frizzling confine- 
ment of my cabin, where the heat of the upper deck dwelt in the 
atmosphere with a sort of tingling, and where the wall — thick as 
the scantling was, and cooled besides outside by the wash of the 
brine — felt to the hand warm as a glass newly rinsed in hot water. I 
went on deck and found myself in a cloudless day. The sun was a 
few degrees above the horizon, and his wake flowed in a river of 
dazzling glory to the inverted image of the yacht reflected with 
mirror-like perfection in the clear, pale-blue profound over which 
she was imperceptibly stealing, fanned by a draught so tender that 
it scarcely lifted the airy space of top-gallant sail whose foot arched 
like a curve of new moon from one top-sail yard-arm to the other. 

I had noticed the dim gray outline of what was apparently a huge 
shark off our quarter on the previous night, and went to the rail to 
see if the beast was still in sight ; and I was overhanging the bul- 
wark, sniffing with delight the fresh salt smell that floated up from 
alongside, scarce warmed as yet by the early sun, and viewing with 
admiration the lovely representation of the yacht’s form in the water, 
with my own face looking up at me too, as though I lay a drowned 
man down there, when Finn suddenly called out, “A humpish look- 
ing craft, your honor ; and I’m a lobster if I don’t think by the stink 
in the air that her cargo’s phosphate manure.” 

I sprang erect, and on turning was greatly astonished to observe 
a bark of some four or five hundred tons approaching us just off the 
weather bow, and almost ready within hail. I instantly crossed the 
deck to get a better view of her. She was a round-bowed vessel, 
deep in the water, with a dirty white band broken by painted ports 


254 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


going the length of her, and she rolled as clumsily upon the light 
swell as if she were full of water. She had apparently lost her fore- 
top-gallant mast, and the head of the top-mast showed heavy with its 
cross-trees over the tall hoist of single top-sail. A group of men stood 
on the forecastle viewing us, and now and again a head was thrust 
over the quarter-deck rail. But she was approaching us almost bow 
on, and her bulwarks being high, there was little to be seen of her 
decks. 

“ Very queer smell,” said I, tasting a sort of faint acid in the at- 
mosphere, mingled with an odor of an earthy, mouldering kind, as 
though a current of air that had crept through some church-yard 
vault had stolen down upon us. 

“ Bones or bird dung, sir; perhaps both. I recognize the smell; 
there’s nicer perfumes a-going.” 

“ Has she signalled you ?” 

“ Ay, sir ; that she wanted to speak, and then hauled her colors 
down when she saw my answering pennant. She’s been in sight 
since hard upon midnight. Crimp made her out agin the stars, and 
how we’ve stole together, blessed if I know, for all the air that’s 
blowed since the middle watch wouldn’t have weight enough to 
slant a butterfly off its course.” 

“ What do they want, I wonder ?” said I ; “ rather a novelty for 
us to be spoken, Finn, seeing that it has always been the other way 
about. Bless me ! how hot it is ! Pleasant to be a passenger aboard 
yonder craft under that sun there, if the aroma she breathes is war- 
rant of the character of her. cargo.” 

A few minutes passed; the bark then shifting her helm slowly 
drew out, giving us a view of her length. As she did so she hauled 
up her main-course and braced aback her foreyards. This looked 
like business, for, had her intention been to hail us merely in pass- 
ing, our joint rate of progress was so exceedingly slow as to render 
any manoeuvring, such as heaving to, unnecessary. Finn and I were 
looking at her waiting for the yacht to be hailed, when Crimp, who 
had been in the waist superintending the washing down of the decks, 
for he was in charge, though the captain had come up at once on 
hearing that there was a vessel close to us ; sour old Crimp, I say, 
whom I had observed staring with a peculiar earnestness at the bark, 
came aft and said, “Ain’t this smell old bones?” 

“ Foul enough for un,” answered Finn. 

“ Hummed,” cried Crimp, gazing intently with his cross-eyes, while 
his mat of beard worked slowly to the action of his jaw upon a quid, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


255 


as though there was something behind it that wanted to get out, “if 
I don’t believe that there craft’s the '^Liza Bobbins'* 

“ Well, and what then ?” demanded Finn. 

“ Why, if so, my brother’s her skipper.” 

Finn levelled his glass. He took a long look at the figure of a 
man who was standing on the bark’s quarter, and who was mani- 
festly pausing until the vessel should have closed a little more yet 
to hail us. 

“ Is your brother like you, Jacob ?” he asked, bringing his eye from 
the telescope. 

“Ay, werry image, only that his wision’s straight. We’re twins.” 

“ Then there ye are to the life !” cried Finn, bursting into a laugh 
and pointing to the bark’s quarter-deck. 

Crimp rested the glass on the rail and put his sour face to it. 
“ Yes,” he exclaimed, “ that’s ’Arry, sure enough,” and without an- 
other word he returned to the waist and went on coolly directing 
the scrubbing and swabbing of the men. 

“ Mr. Monson,” said Finn, who had taken the glass from Crimp, 
and extending it to me as he spoke, “ just take a view of them fig- 
ures on the fo’k’sle, sir, will ’ee? There’s three of ’em standing 
alone close against the cathead. They ain’t blue-jackets, are they ?” 

But at that instant we were hailed, and I forgot Finn’s request in 
listening to what was said. 

“ Schooner, ahoy !” 

“ Holloa !” answered Finn. 

“What schooner is that, and where are you bound?” cried the 
man on the bark’s quarter-deck, in a voice whose sulky rasping note 
so exactly resembled Jacob Crimp’s when he exerted his lungs that 
I observed some of our sailors staring with astonishment, as though 
they imagined MuflSn had gone to w’ork again. 

“ The BridCf of Southampton, on a cruise,” responded Finn, add- 
ing in an aside to me, “ no use in singing out about the Cape of 
Good Hope, sir.” 

There was a brief pause, then Finn bawled, “ What ship are 
you ?” 

“ The 'Liza Bobbins^" was the answer, “ of and for Liverpool from 
Hitchaboo with a cargo of gewhany.” 

“Thought so,” exclaimed Finn to me, with a snuffle; “d’ye smell 
it now, sir ? How they can get men to sign for a woyage with such 
a cargo beats my going a-fishing.” 

“ Schooner, ahoy 1” now came from the bark again. 


256 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Holloa r 

“ I’ve got a lady and gent here,” roared the figure through his 
hands, which he held funnelwise to his mouth, “ as want to get 
aboard summat smelling a bit sweeter nor this. They was wrecked 
in a yacht like yourn, and I came across ’em in a open boat five 
days ago. Will ’ee take ’em ?” 

“What was the name of the yacht, can you tell me?” cried Finn. 

The man turned his head, evidently interrogating another, proba- 
bly his mate, who stood a little behind him ; then bringing his 
hands to his mouth afresh, he roared out, “ The Shark !" 

Finn slowly brought his long face to bear upon mine ; his figure 
moving with it as though the whole of him were a piece of mechan- 
ism warranted to perform that motion, but no more. “Gracious 
thunder!” he exclaimed under his breath, and then his jaw fell. I 
heard the confused humming of the men’s voices forward, a swift 
flow of excited talk subdued into a sort of buzzing by their habits 
of shipboard discipline. I felt that I was as pale in the face as if I 
had received some violent shock. 

“ The Shark !" I cried, in a breathless way ; “ the lady and gen- 
tleman, then, aboard that vessel must be the colonel and Lady Mon- 
son. The yacht probably met with the gale that swept over us and 
foundered in it;” then pulling myself together with an effort, for 
amazement seemed to have sent all my wits adrift for a moment, I 
exclaimed, “ Hail the bark at once, Finn ; say that you will be hap- 
py to receive the lady and gentleman. Ask the captain to come 
aboard, or stay — where is Crimp ? Let old Jacob invite his brother. 
We must act with extreme wariness. My God, what an astounding 
confrontment 1” 

“ Mr. Crimp !” roared Finn, on a sudden exploding, as it were, out 
of his state of petrifaction. Jacob came aft. “Jump on that there 
rail, Mr. Crimp, and tell your brother who ye are, and ask him 
aboard.” 

The sour little man climbed onto the bulwarks, and in a voice 
that was the completest imaginable echo of that in which the fellow 
aboard the bark had hailed us he shouted : 

“ ’Arry, ahoy 1” 

The other stood a while staring, dropping his head first on one 
side, then on the other, in the manner of one who discredits his 
sight and seeks to obtain a clearer view by dodging about for a true 
focus. 

“ Why, Jacob,” he presently sung out, “is that you, brother?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


257 


Ay ; come aboard, will ye, ’Arry ?” answered Crimp, with which 
he dropped off the rail, and trudged sourly to the gangway without 
the least visible expression of surprise or pleasure or emotion of any 
kind. 

Meanwhile I had taken notice of strong manifestations of excite- 
ment among the little group on the forecastle of the bark — I mean 
the small knot of men to whom Finn had called my attention. The 
vessels lay so near together that postures and gestures were easily 
distinguishable. There could be no doubt now that the fellows had 
formed a portion of a yacht’s crew. Their dress betokened it ; they 
gazed with much probing and thrusting of their heads and elbowing 
of one another at our men, who lined the forward bulwarks — most of 
our sailors having turned up — as though seeking for familiar faces. 
I eagerly looked for signs of the colonel and his companion, but it 
was still very early ; they were doubtless in their cabins, and the cry- 
ing out of voices from vessel to vessel was so recent that even if the 
couple had been disturbed by the noise they would not yet have had 
time to dress themselves and make their appearance on deck. 

“ Will you go and report to Sir Wilfrid, sir?” said Finn. 

“ At once,” I answered. “ Let old Jacob’s brother have the full 
story, the whole truth, should he arrive before I return. His sym- 
pathies must be enlisted on Sir Wilfrid’s side or there may happen 
a most worrisome difficulty if the colonel refuses to leave that bark 
and should make some splendid offer to the skipper to retain him 
and her ladyship.” 

“ ril talk with Jacob while his brother’s a-coming, sir,” said Finn. 

I stepped below with a beating heart. I was exceedingly agitated, 
could scarce bring my mind to accept the reality of what had hap- 
pened, and I dreaded, moreover, the effect of the news upon my 
cousin. The Shark foundered ! — the couple we were in chase of 
picked up out of an open boat ! — this great, blank, lidless eye of 
ocean whose infinite distances I had pointed into over and over 
again to Miss Laura yielding up the pair that we were in chase of in 
an encounter bewildering as a surprise and miraculous for its unex- 
pectedness! — why, I confess I breathed in gasps as I thought of it 
all, making my way, absolutely trembling in my shoes, to Wilfrid’s 
berth. I knocked and was told to enter. He had nearly finished 
dressing, and looked up from a boot that he was buttoning with a 
cold, bitter, triumphant smile at me. 

“I know,” he exclaimed, in a voice infinitely more compose^ thail 
I could have e^^erted ; “ this is Monday, Charles,” 

17 


258 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


It was Monday, as he said ! I stared stupidly at him for a min- 
ute, and then saw how it was that he knew. Tlie window of his port 
was unscrewed and lay wide open ; through it I could see the bark 
fluctuating in the silver and blue of the atmosphere as she swayed 
swinging her canvas in and out with every ^oll. The port made a 
very funnel for the ear as a vehicle of sound, for I could distinctly 
hear the orders given on board the vessel for lowering a boat ; the 
voice of one of the Shark's men apparently hailing our fellows ; the 
beat of her cloths against the mast; and the recoil of the water 
breaking from her broad channels as she buried her plates to the 
height almost of those platforms. 

“ I am breathless with astonishment,” said I ; “ but, God be praised, 
Wilf, I see you mean to confront this business coldly.” 

“ The captain of that vessel is coming on board,” he said, speak- 
ing with extraordinary composure, while his face, from which the 
smile had faded, still preserved the light or expression of its min- 
gled triumph and bitterness. 

“ He will be here in a minute or two,” I answered. 

Is Laura up ?” 

“ I do not know.” 

“ See that she gets the news, Charles, at once. I shall want her 
on deck. Then return and we will concert a little programme.” 

I quitted his cabin, marvelling exceedingly at his collectedness. 
But then I had noticed that his mind steadied in proportion as his 
attention grew fixed. This is true of most weak intelligences, I sup- 
pose; if you want them to ride you must let go an anchor for them. 
I was hesitating at Miss Jennings’s door, stretching my ear for the 
sound of her voice, that I might know she was dressing and had her 
maid with her, when the handle was turned and the maid came out. 
I inquired if her mistress was rising. She answered “Yes.” “Tell 
her,” said I, “ that there is a vessel close to us, and that Colonel 
Hope-Kennedy and Lady Monson are on board of her. Sir Wilfrid 
begs that she will make haste, as he desires her presence on deck as 
soon as possible.” I then returned to my cousin’s berth, thinking 
that, though to be sure the news would immensely scare the little 
girl, it was best that she should have the whole truth at once, and so 
find time to tauten her nerves for what was to come. 

As I entered my cousin’s cabin I heard through the open port the 
sound of the grinding of oars between thole-pins, and immediately 
after there rang out a cry of “ Look out for the end of the line !” by 
wbicb I knew that Crimp’s brother was alongsi4e of us, Wilfrid, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


259 


having buttoned bis boots, was now completely dressed. He stood 
with a hand upon the edge of his bunk, gazing at the bark, which 
still hung fair in the blue and gleaming disk of the port-hole, show- 
ing in that circular frame like a daguerrotype with the silvery flash- 
ing and fading of light, the shooting prismatic tints, the shot-silk- 
like alternations of hues that accompanied the floating heave of her 
by the swell to the sunshine. I picked up a small binocular glass 
that lay on the table, but could see nothing as yet of Lady Monson 
or her companion. 

“My wife was always a late riser,” said Wilfrid, turning to me, 
with a haggard smile, and a cold sarcastic note in his voice, that was 
steadied, as your ear instinctively detected, by the iron resolution of 
his mood, as the spine stiffens the form. 

“ Had we not better go on deck ?” said 1. “ It might be useful 

to hear what the master of the bark has to say.” 

“ Inch by inch, Charles. There is no hurry. I have my man 
safe,” pointing at the vessel. “ Let us briefly debate a course of ac- 
tion — or, rather, let me leave myself in your hands. We want no 
* scene,’ as women call it, or as little as possible. There are many 
grinning, merely curious spectators, and Lady Monson is still my 
wife. What do you advise ?” 

“First of all, my dear* Wilfrid, what do you want?” I exclaimed, 
rather puzzled, and not at all relishing the responsibility of offering 
suggestions. “ You intend, of course, that Lady Monson shall come 
on board the Bride. But the colonel ?” 

“ Oh,” cried he, sharply and fiercely, “ I shall want him here too.” 

“Then you don’t mean to separate them?” 

“ Yes, I do,” he answered ; “ as effectually as a bullet can manage 
it for me.” 

“ Ha !” said I, and I was silent a little, and then said : “ If I were 
you, I should leave Crimp’s brother to sail away with the rascal. 
The separation will be as complete as — ” 

He silenced me with a passionate gesture, but said, nevertheless, 
calmly, “ I want them both on board my yacht.” 

“ Will they come if they are fetched, think you ?” 

He walked impatiently to the door. “ I must plan for myself. 
I see,” he exclaimed. He grasped the handle and turned to me, 
with his hands still upon it. “ I see how it is with you, Charles,” 
he said, almost gently ; “ you object to my fighting Colonel Hope- 
Kennedy.” 

f do,” I answered. “ I object to this scoundrel being furnished 


260 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


with a chance of completing the injury he has done you by shoot- 
ing you.” 

He came to me, put his hand on my shoulder, bent his face close 
to mine, and said, in a low voice : “ Do not fear for me ; I shall kill 
him. As you value my love” — his tone faltered — “do not come 
by so much as a hair’s-breadth between me and ray resolution to 
take his life. If he will not fight me on board my yacht, he shall 
fight me on yonder vessel. He is a soldier — a colonel ; he will not 
refuse my challenge. Come, my programme is arranged ; we are 
now wasting time.” He stepped from his berth, and I followed 
him. 

As I turned to ascend the companion-steps, Wilfrid being in ad' 
vance of me, mounting with impetuosity, I saw Miss Jennings come 
out of her berth. I waited for her. Her face was bloodless, yet I 
was glad to see something like resolution expressed in it. 

“ Is it true, Mr. Monson, that my sister is close to us in a ship ?” 
she asked. 

“ She and the colonel,” I answered ; “ within eyeshot — that is to 
say, when they step on deck.” 

She put her hand to her breast, and drew several short breaths. 

“ Pray, take courage,” I said ; “ it is for your sister to tremble — 
not you.” 

“How has Wilfrid received this piece of extraordinary news?” 
she asked, with a sort of panting in her way of speaking. 

“ He is as unmoved, I give you my word, as if he were of cast- 
iron. You shall judge; he has preceded us.” 

I took her hand and led her up the ladder. Crimp’s brother had 
apparently just climbed over the yacht’s side. As I made ray ap- 
pearance he was coming aft from the gangway in company with 
Finn and surly old Jacob. All three rumbled with talk at once as 
they made, with a deep-sea roll, for Wilfrid, who was standing so as 
to keep the main-mast of the yacht between him and the bark. 
Miss Jennings started and stopped on seeing the vessel, that had 
closed us somewhat since she had first hove to, so that it was almost 
possible now to distinguish the faces of her people. When my 
companion moved again she seemed to shrink — almost cower, in' 
deed — and passed to the right of me, as though to hide herself. 
Then, peeping past me at the vessel, she said, “ I see no lady on 
board.” 

“Your sister is still below, T expect^ ” I answered. 

Sl^e left me and c|aspe4 my cousin’s arm, just saying, “ Qh, Wib 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


261 


frid !” in a tearful, pitiful voice. He gazed down at her, and pressed 
his hand upon hers with a look of dreadful grief entering his face 
swiftly as a blush suffuses a woman’s cheek; but the expression 
passed quickly. Something he said in a whisper, then lightly freed 
his arm from her clasp and turned to the master of the bark. 

“ Captain Crimp, your honor,” said Finn, knuckling his forehead ; 

Jacob’s brother. Sir Wilfrid.” 

Small need to mention that, I thought, for, saving that Jacob was 
the taller by an inch or two, while his brother’s eyes looked straight 
at you, the twins were the most ludicrous incomparable match that 
any lover of the uncommon could have desired to see ; both of the 
same sulky cast of countenance, both of the exact same build, each 
wearing a light kind of beard similarly colored. 

“Yes, I’m Jacob’s brother,” answered Captain Crimp. “Heard 
he was out a-yachtin’, but didn’t know the name of the wessel.” 

“ I’m very glad to have fallen in with you,” said Wilfrid, address- 
ing him with a coolness that I saw astonished Finn ; while Miss 
Laura glanced at me with an arching of her eyebrows as eloquent 
of amazement as if she had spoken her thoughts. “ I hear that you 
have a lady and gentleman on board your ship.” 

“Ay,” answered Captain Crimp, bluntly, though, somehow, one 
found nothing offensive in his manner of speech; “they want to 
leave me, and,” added he, with a surly grin, “ I don’t blame ’em. 
Gewhany ain’t over-choice as a smell, ’ticularly down here.” 

“Their names are Colonel Hope-Kennedy and Lady Monson. Is 
that so ?” demanded Wilfrid, speaking slowly and coldly. 

Captain Crimp turned a stupid stare of wonder upon his brother, 
and then, addressing Wilfrid, exclaimed: “Who told ’ee? Ye’ve 
got the gent’s name right; the lady’s his missus — same name as 
t’other’s.” Wilfrid set his teeth. 

I looked towards the bark, but there were no signs of the colonel 
or her ladyship yet. 

“ The lady is my wife. Captain Crimp,” said Wilfrid. 

“ Ho, indeed!” responded the man, showing no surprise whatever. 

“ She has run away,” continued my cou.sin, “ with the gentleman 
you have on board your vessel, and we,” looking round upon us, 
“ are here in pursuit of them. We have met with them — very un- 
expectedly. It is likely when Colonel Hope-Kennedy discovers who 
we are that he may request you to trim your sails and proceed on 
your voyage home, and offer you a sum of money to convey Lady 
Monson and himself away from us. You will not do so !” he ex- 


262 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


claimed, with sudden temper, which he instantly subdued, though It 
darkened his face. 

“ I don’t want no trouble,” answered Captain Crimp. “ The par- 
ties have been a-wanting to get out of my wessel pretty nigh ever 
since we fell in with them, and here’s their chance. Only,” he added, 
with a wooden look at his brother, “ if they don’t choose to quit I 
can’t chuck ’em overboard.” 

“ Oh yes, ’ee can, ’Arry,” said Jacob. “ What ye’ve got to do 
is to tell ’em they must go. No sogerin’ in this business, ’Arry ; so 
stand by. The law ain’t a-going to let ye keep a lawful wife away 
from her wedded spouse when he tarns to and demands her of ye. 
Better chuck ’em overboard than have the lawyers fall foul of ye, 
’Arry.” 

This was a long speech for Jacob, who nodded several times at 
his brother with energy after delivering it. 

“ Well, and who wants to keep a wedded woman away from her 
lawful spouse, as ye calls it, Jacob ?” exclaimed Captain Crimp. 
“ What I says is, if the parties refuses to leave, I can’t chuck ’em 
overboard.” 

“ See here, captain,” said Finn, “Jacob’s right; and what you as 
a sensible man’s got to do is to steer clear of quandaries. His hon- 
or ’ll be sending for the lady and the gent, and you’ll have to tell 
’em to ^0, as Jacob says. If they refuse — but let ’em refuse first ” 
— he continued, with a look at Wilfrid. 

“ I don’t want no trouble,” said Captain Crimp ; “ and I ain’t 
going to get in a mess for no man. Do what you think’s proper. 
What I ask is to be left out of the boiling.” 

As he spoke I touched Miss Jennings’s arm. There they areP'' 
I whispered. 


AN OCEAN THAGEDY. 


263 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE COLONEL AND HER LADYSHIP. 

Wilfrid saw them, too, in a flash. He slightly reeled, mating a 
fierce grasp at some gear against the main-mast to steady himself. 
Distant as they were, one could see, nevertheless, that they were an 
uncommonly fine couple. A man who was apparently the mate of 
the bark stood near them, and, though seemingly above rather than 
below the average stature, he looked a very poor little fellow along- 
side the towering and commanding figure of the colonel. I witnessed 
no gestures, no movements, nothing of any kind to denote astonish- 
ment or alarm in either of them. They stood stock-still, side by 
side, surveying us over an open rail that exposed their forms from 
their feet ; he, so far as I could make out, attired in dark blue cloth 
or serge, and a cap with a naval peak, the top protected by a white 
cover ; she in a dress of some sort of yellow material that fitted her 
figure as a glove fits the hand. But more than this one’s sight could 
not distinguish, saving that her hat, that was very wide at the brim, 
was apparently of straw or chip with one side curled up to a large 
crimson flower there. 

I saw Miss Laura gazing with the fascination of a bird at some 
gilded and glowing and emerald-eyed serpent. Captain Crimp, look- 
ing round at his vessel just then, said, “ Them’s the parties.” 

“Ay, there’s her ladyship,” whipped out Finn, biting his lip, how- 
ever, as though ashamed of the exclamation, with a dodge of his 
head to right and left as he levelled a look at the couple under the 
sharp of his hand. 

“ Finn,” cried Wilfrid, with a face as crimson as though he had ex- 
posed it to the sun all day, and with a note in his utterance as if his 
teeth were setting spite of him while he spoke, “ get a boat lowered 
and brought to the gangway. You, myself. Miss Jennings, and my 
cousin will go aboard that bark at once. Captain Crimp will attend 
us in his own boat.” He turned swiftly upon the master of the 
bark, and exclaimed imperiously, with wrath surging into his words 
till it rendered the key of them almost shrill, “ I count upon your 
assistance. You must order those people off your vessel. Yonder 


^64 


an ocean TRAGEDV. 


lady is my wife, and the man alongside of her I must have — here 
stamping his foot and pointing vehemently to the deck, “ that I may 
punish him. Do you understand me?” 

“ Why, of course I do,” answered Captain Crimp, manifestly awed 
by the wild look my cousin fastened upon him, by his manner, full 
of haughtiness and passion, and his tone of fierce command. “ What 
I says is, do what ye like, only let me be out of the smother. My 
crew’s troublesome enough. Don’t want to get in no mess through 
castaway folks.” 

Finn was yelling orders along the deck for a boat’s crew to lay aft. 

On a sudden the yacht was hailed by the man whom I had noticed 
standing near Colonel Hope-Kennedy. “ Schooner ahoy !” 

Jacob Crimp went to the rail. “ Holloa !” he bawled. 

“ Will yer tell my capt’n, please,” shouted the fellow from the 
bark’s quarter-deck, “that the lady and gent desire him to come 
aboard, as they don’t want nothin’ to do with your schooner ? They 
prefer to keep where they are, and request that no more time may 
be lost.” 

“ Ha !” cried Wilfrid, looking round at me with an iron grin ; 
then he half screamed to the men who were running aft, “ Bear a 
hand with the boat, ray lads, bear a hand with the boat ! WVve 
found what we’ve been hunting in yonder craft, and by God, men, 
we’ll have that couple out of it, or sink the vessel they stand on !” 

Jack is almost certain to cheer to a speech of this kind ; the sailors 
burst out into a loud hurrah as they sprang to the falls. Captain 
Crimp walked to his brother’s side, and putting his hand to his 
mouth cried to the mate of his vessel, for such the fellow undoubtedly 
was, “ Mr. Lobb.” 

“Holloa, sir!” 

“ My compliments to the lady and gent, and we’re all a-coming 
aboard. I don’t want no trouble, tell ’em, and I don’t mean .to have 
none.” 

Scarce was the sense of this remark gatherable when Lady Monson 
walked to the companion and vanished below, leaving the colonel 
standing erect as a sentry at the rail. 

“She’s gone to her cabin, and will lock herself in, probably. 
What’ll be to do then ?” said I to Miss Laura. 

She wrung her hands, but made no answer. 

Meanwhile in hot haste the sailors had cast adrift the gripes of 
the boat and lowered her. She was a roomy fabric, pulling six oars, 
and capable of comfortably stowing eighteen or twenty people. 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


S65 


“Air. Crimp,” said Wilfrid, “get tackles aloft ready for swaying 
out of the hold the eighteen-pounder that lies there. D’ye under- 
stand 

“Ay, it shall be done,” answered Crimp, coming away from his 
brother, with whom he had been exchanging some muttering sen- 
tences. 

“ An eighteen-pounder !” cried Captain Crimp, whipping round. 

“ Have everything in readiness,” cried Wilfrid, making a move 
towards the gangway, “ to get the gun mounted, with ball and car- 
tridge for loading. See to it now, or look to yourself, Crimp. 
Come !” he cried. 

He seized Miss Laura by the hand ; Finn and I followed. Captain 
Crimp rolling astern of us. We descended the side and entered the 
boat, and then shoved off, waiting when we were within a length or 
two of the yacht’s side for Captain Crimp to drop into his own boat. 

“ Skipper,” sung out Finn to him, “ hail your bark, will’ee, and 
tell ’em to get a ladder or steps over.” 

This was done ; the sailors of the bark, along with the three or 
four yachtsmen who had been picked up out of the Sharlc^s boat, 
scenting plenty of excitement in the air, tumbled about with alacrity. 
They saw more sport than they could have got out of an evening at 
a theatre, and I question if a man of them could have been got to 
handle a brace until this wild ocean drama had been played through. 
Meanwhile the colonel stood rigid at the rail looking on. 

“ What is to be done,” Mr. Monson, whispered Miss Laura to me, 
“ if Henrietta has locked herself up in her cabin and refuses to come 
out ?” 

“Let us hope that her door has no lock,” said 1. “There are 
easy ways, however, of coaxing a bolt.” 

“ Give way, lads !” cried Finn. The six blades cut the water sharp 
as knives, and a few strokes carried us alongside the bark. We held 
a grim silence, saving that as the bow-oar picked up his boat-hook 
he expectorated violently to the evil smell that seemed to come float- 
ing off the vessel’s side as she rolled towards us, driving the air our 
way. Evil it was, as you may suppose of a cargo of guano mixed 
up with the rotting carcasses of sea-fowl, under the blaze of the sun, 
whose roasting eye of fire was fast crawling to its meridian. The 
faint breeze was dying, and the heat alongside the bark was scarce 
sufferable with the tingling of the luminary’s light like fiery needles 
darting into one’s eyes and skin off the smooth surface that flashed 
with a dazzle of new tin. The colonel had left the rail and had 


266 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


seated himself upon a little skylight, his arms folded. The first to 
climb the side was Wilfrid; Finn and I followed, supporting Miss 
Laura between us; then came Captain Crimp. The vessel was an 
old craft, her decks somewhat grimy, with a worm-eaten look ; the 
smell of the cargo coupled with the heat was hardly supportable ; 
the crew, half-naked, unwashed, and many of them wild with hair, 
stood sweltering in a cluster near the fore-hatch staring at us, grin- 
ning and nudging one another. But the men who had belonged to 
the Shark were already leaning over the side, calling to our men to 
hook their boat more forward that they might have a yarn. 

Wilfrid, who was a little in advance of us, walked steadily up to 
Colonel Hope-Ken nedy, who rose as my cousin approached him, 
letting fall his arms from their folded posture. Handsome he was 
not, at least to my taste, but he was what would be called a fine 
man — exceedingly so ; six feet one or more in stature, with a body 
and limbs perfectly proportioned to his height; small dark eyes, 
heavily thatched, coal - black whiskers and mustache, ivory- white 
teeth, and an expression of intelligence in his face as his air was one 
of distinction. He had a very care-worn look, was pale, haggard 
almost; dark hollows under the eyes, brought about, as I might 
readily suppose, by exposure and privation in an open boat. I 
could witness no agitation in him whatever; his nerves seemed of 
steel, and he confronted Wilfrid’s approach haughtily erect, merely 
swaying to the heel of the deck, passionless and as unmoved in his 
aspect as any figure of wax. 

Wilfrid walked right up to him and said, composedly, while he 
pointed to the gangway, “ You will be good enough to enter my 
boat that my crew may convey you at once to the yacht.” 

“ I shall do nothing of the kind, sir,” answered the colonel, quiet- 
ly, but in a tone distinctly audible to us who had come to a halt 
some paces away. “Captain Crimp!” 

“ Sir,” responded the master of the bark, with an uneasy shuffling 
step or two towards the couple. 

“ You are the commander of this vessel. It is in your power to 
order your deck to be cleared of these visitors. I am your passen- 
ger, and look to you for protection. I decline to exchange this ves- 
sel for that yacht, and request, therefore, that you will proceed on 
your voyage.” He spoke with a fine air of dignity, the effect of 
which was improved, I thought, by his giving himself slightly the 
manner of an injured man. 

“ Sir, I want no trouble,” answered Captain Crimp. “ I onder- 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


26 l 


stand that the lady you’re with is this gentleman’s wife. Every 
man’s got a right to his own. The gentleman means to take the 
lady back with him to his yacht, and I don’t think that there’s any 
one aboard this wessel as’ll stop him.” 

“ I mean to take my wife,” exclaimed Wilfrid, still preserving 
what in him was an amazing composure of voice and manner, “ and 
I mean to take you too. Colonel Hope-Kennedy, you are a bloody 
rascal! You shall fight me — but not here. You shall fight me — 
yonder he pointed to the Bride. “ This you must repay.” He 
struck him hard upon the face with the back of his hand. 

The cheek that had received the blow turned scarlet, the other 
was of a ghastly pallor. He looked at Wilfrid for a moment with 
such a fire in his eye, such a hellish expression of wrath in his face, 
that I involuntarily sprang forward to the help of my cousin, re- 
solved that there should be no vulgar, degraded exhibition of fisti- 
cuffs and wrestling between the men. 

But I was misled by the colonel’s looks. He folded his arms, and 
said — exhibiting in his utterance a marvellous control over his tem- 
per — “That blow was needless. I will fight you here or on your 
own vessel, as you please. But if I fight you yonder the condition 
must be” — he was now looking at me and addressing me — “that 
I am afterwards at liberty to return to this vessel.” 

Wilfrid eyed him with a savage smile. I approached the man, 
raising my hat. He instantly returned the salute. 

“ Sir,” I said, “ I am Sir Wilfrid Monson’s cousin, and agree to 
the condition you name. To save any further exhibition of temper 
before those men there, may I entreat yo u to/ at once^step into the 
yacht’s boat ?” 

His eye wandered about the deck for a moment or two ; he then 
said, “ I am without a second. That need not signify. But I must 
be satisfied that the duel in other respects will be in accordance with 
the practice of such things ashore.” 

“ Oh, certainly !” I answered. 

“ What are to be the weapons?” he inquired. 

“ Pistols,” I replied. 

“I have no pistols. I have lost all by the foundering of my 
yacht.” 

“ We have pistols,” said I. 

He bowed, then his eye roamed over the deck again, and he ex- 
claimed, with the air of a man thinking aloud, “ I am without a sec- 
ond,” adding decisively, “I am perfectly willing to give Sir Wilfrid 


268 AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 

Monson satisfaction, but I submit, sir, that it would be more conven- 
ient to wait until he and I have arrived home — ” 

“No!” thundered my cousin. “I do not mean that you shall 
arrive home.” 

The colonel glanced at him with a sneer. 

“ Will you be so good as to step into the boat, sir?” said 1. 

He hung in the wind with a look at the little companion-hatch. 
“ The lady, I presume,” he said, addressing me, “ is to be left — ” 

“Do not mention her name!” said Wilfrid, in a trembling voice, 
approaching him by a stride with a countenance dark with the men- 
ace of mad blood. 

The colonel fell away from him with a swiftly passing convulsion 
of countenance such as might have been wrought by a sudden spasm 
of the heart. 

“ This way, sir,” said Finn, moving in a bustling fashion towards 
the gangway. 

I confess I drew a breath of relief when the colonel, without a 
word, and with a mechanical step, followed him. There was, indeed, 
no other course that he could adopt. Captain Crimp had retreated 
doggedly to the gangway abreast of the one we had entered by, and 
lay over the rail in a wooden way, with resolution to give himself 
no concern in this business strong in his posture. The colonel saw, 
therefore, that it was useless to hope for his interference. In a few 
moments he had descended the side, and was being pulled aboard 
the Bride, with Finn standing up in the stern-sheets and singing out 
to us that he would return for the rest of the party shortly. 

I now missed Miss Laura, and was looking around the deck for 
her when she suddenly came up out of the cabin. I was standing 
close to the hatch at the moment, which was the reason, perhaps, of 
her addressing me instead of Wilfrid, who was at the skylight gaz- 
ing at the withdrawing boat with an absent face. 

“ Mr. Monson,” she exclaimed, “ my sister will not answer me. I 
do not know where she is.” 

“ Have you tried all the berths?” 

“ I have knocked at every door and called to her. I did not like 
to turn the handles.” 

I thought to myself, suppose her ladyship has committed sui- 
cide ! — lying dead below with a knife in her heart ! Truly a pleas- 
ant ending of our chase, with a chance on top of it of the colonel 
driving a bullet through my cousin’s brains ! The girl’s gaze was 
fastened on me ; her pallor was grievous, her face full of shame. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


269 


grief, consternation ; her very beauty had a sort of passing withered 
look, like a rose in the hot atmosphere of a room. 

“ Wilfrid !” I exclaimed. 

He brought his eyes away from the boat with a start and ap- 
proached us. “Miss Jennings has been overhauling the cabin be- 
low^,” said I, “ and cannot get your wife to answer her.” 

“Have you seen her, Laura?” he cried, in a half-breathless way, 
stooping his face to hers, with his near-sighted eyes moistening till 
I looked to see a tear fall. 

“No,” she answered. “She has shut herself up in her cabin. I 
have knocked at every berth and called to her, but she will not an- 
swer me.” 

His face changed. He shouted to Captain Crimp, who was lean- 
ing with his back against the starboard rail near the gangway, 
watching us out of the corner of his eyes, and w'aiting for us to take 
the next step. He came to’ us. 

“ Kindly show us,” said Wilfrid, “ the cabin which the lady occu- 
pies.” 

“ This way,” he answered, and forthwith trundled down the com- 
panion-steps, we at his heels. We found ourselves in what Captain 
Crimp would doubtless have called a state cabin — a gloomy, dirty in- 
terior with a board-like rude table that travelled upon stanchions, so 
that it could be thrust up out of the road when room was wanted — 
while on either hand of it was a row of coarse lockers, the covers of 
which were liberally scored with the marks of knives that had been 
used for cutting up cake-tobacco. The upper deck was very low 
pitched, and, as if the heat and the disgusting smell of the cargo did 
not suffice, there swung from a blackened beam a lighted, globular 
lamp, the flame of which burned into a coil of thick black smoke, 
that filled the atmosphere with a flavor of hot fat. Yet apparently,, 
to judge by the number of berths this rank and grimy old bark 
was fitted with, she had served as a passenger-vessel in her heyday. 
There were doors conducting to little cabins forward of the living- 
room, and there were four berths abaft contrived much as the Bride's 
were — that is to say, rendered accessible by a slender alleyway or 
corridor. 

“The lady’s cabin,” said Captain Crimp, pointing, “ is the starn 
one to port, the airiest of ’em all. It was chosen because it was 
furdest ofl from this here smell ;” and he snuffled as he spoke. 

Wilfrid, followed by Miss Laura, at once walked to the indicated 
pabin, I remained standing by the table with Crimp, watching my 


270 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


cousin. He tried the handle of the door, found the key turned or 
a bolt shot, shook it a little, then, after a pause, knocked lightly. 

“ Henrietta,” he exclaimed, “ it is I — your husband ! You know 
my voice. I want you.” 

There was no answer. He knocked again, then Miss Laura ex- 
claimed, “ Henrietta, open the door ! Wilfrid is here — I am here — I, 
Laura, your sister. We have come to take you home to the little 
one that you left behind you. Oh, Henrietta, dear, for my sake — 
for your child’s sake, for our father’s sake — ” her voice faltered, and 
she broke down, sobbing piteously. 

“ I hope to Heaven the woman has not killed herself !” I exclaimed 
to Captain Crimp. “ But it is for you to act now. Step aft with 
me. You don’t want to keep her on board, I suppose?” 

“ Not I,” he answered. 

“ Threaten, then, to break open the door. If that don’t avail, send 
at once for your carpenter, for you may then take it that her silence 
means she lies dead.” 

He walked aft and beat with a fist as hard as the stock of a mus- 
ket, raising a small thunder. “ Sorry to interfere, lady,” he ex- 
claimed, talking at the door with his nose within an inch of it ; “ this 
here’s no job for the likes of me to be messing about with.” A dead 
pause. “ There’s folks who are a-waiting for you to come out.” Here 
he grasped the handle of the door and boisterously shook it. “ And 
as there’s no call now for you to remain, and as loitering in this 
here heat with the hatches flush with gewhany isn’t to none of our 
liking, I must beg, mum,” he shouted, “ that you’ll slip the bolt in- 
side and open the door.” 

Another dead pause. Miss Jennings looked aghast, and indeed 
the stillness within the cabin now caused me to forebode the worst. 
It was clear, however, that no fear of the sort had visited Wilfrid. 
He gazed at the door with a kind of terrier-like expression in his 
fixed eyes. 

Captain Crimp once more beat heavily, and again wrestled with 
the handle, trying the door at the same time with his shoulder. 
“ Well, mum,” he bawled, “ you will do as you like, I suppose, and 
so must 1. I’m not partial to knocking my ship about, but, by 
thunder, lady, if this here door ain’t opened at once I’ll send for the 
carpenter to force it I” Another pause. He added in his hoarsest 
voice, addressing us generally, “ Do she know that the gent that’s 
been keeping her company has gone aboard the yacht?” 

'‘She’ll know it now,” I answered, “ if she has ears to hear with,” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


271 


I noticed Wilfrid violently start on my saying this. 

“Gentlemen,” said Captain Crimp, “I’ll go and fetch the carpen- 
ter;” and he had taken a stride when the bolt within was shot, the 
handle turned, and the door opened. 

Had we come fresh from the splendor of the morning on deck we 
must have had great difficulty in distinguishing objects in the gloom 
of the little, hot, evil-smelling interior that had been suddenly re- 
vealed to us ; but the twilight of the narrow passage in which we 
stood had accustomed our sight to the dim atmosphere. Lady Mon- 
son stood before us in the middle of the cabin, reared to her fullest 
stature, her hands clasped in front of her in a posture of passionate 
resolution. I must confess that she had the noblest figure of any 
woman I had ever seen, and no queen of tragedy could have surpassed 
the unconsciously heroic attitude of scorn, indignation, hate, unsoft- 
ened by the least air of remorse or shame, that she had assumed. 

“ Captain Crimp,” she cried, in a clear rich contralto voice that 
thrilled through and through one with what I must call the intensi- 
ty of the emotions it conveyed, “ how dare you threaten me with 
breaking open my door? I am your passenger — you will be paid 
for the services you have rendered. I demand your protection. 
Who are these people ? Order them to leave your ship, sir.” 

She spoke with her eyes glowing, and riveted upon Captain 
Crimp’s awkward, agitated countenance, never so much as glancing 
at her husband, at her sister, or at me. 

“Well, mum,” answered Captain Crimp, passing the back of his 
hand over his streaming forehead, “ all that I know is this : here’s a 
gentleman as says you’re his wife ; his yacht lies within heasy reach ; 
he wants you aboard, and if so be that you are his wife, which no- 
body yet has denied, then you’re bound to go along with him ; and 
I may as well tell ’ee that my dooty as a man lies in seeing that ye 
do go.” And here the old chap very spunkily bestowed several em- 
phatic nods upon her. 

“ Henrietta,” cried Miss Laura, “ have you nothing to say to me, 
or to Wilfrid?” 

“ Go !” she shrieked, with a sharp stamp of her foot, and a wild, 
warding off gesture of her arms, “ what right have you to follow 
me? I am my own mistress. Leave me. The mere sight of you 
will drive me as mad as he is !” pointing impetuously to Wilfrid but 
without looking at him. 

The poor little darling shrunk like a wounded bird, literally cow- 

ering behind me, dismayed and terrified, not, indeed, by the woman’s 


272 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


words, but by the passion in them, the air with which she delivered 
them, the wrath in her face and the fire in her eyes that would have 
made you think they reflected a sunset. I looked at Wilfrid. Hen- 
rietta had not exhibited the least grief, the least shame, or the feeblest 
hint, in short, of womanly weakness. I believe he would have fallen 
upon his knees to her. I had observed an expression almost of adora- 
tion enter into and soften his lineaments to an aspect that I do not 
exaggerate in calling beautiful, through the exquisite pathos of the 
tenderness that had informed it on her throwing open the door and 
revealing herself to us, but that look was gone. Her scornful ref- 
erence to his madness had replaced it by an ugly shadow, a scowl of 
malignant temper. He stepped over the coaming of the door-way, 
and extended his hand as if to grasp her. 

“ Come !” he exclaimed, breathing dangerously fast; “ I want you. 
This is merely wasting time. Come you must! Do you under- 
stand ? Come !” he repeated, still keeping his arm out-stretched. 

She recoiled from him as though a cartridge had exploded at her 
feet, and pressed her back against the side of a bunk, the edge of 
which she gripped with her hands. 

“ Leave me !” she said, looking at him now. “ I hate you ! You 
cannot control me. I abhor the very memory of you. Madman 
and wretch, why have you followed me?” 

Captain Crimp, who had been shuflfling restlessly near me, now 
whipped in, hoarse, angry, and determined : “ See here, mum, all this 
calling of names isn’t going to sarve anybody’s purpose. I see how 
the land lies now. The gentleman has a right to his own, and it’s 
proper ye should know that ’tain’t my intention to keep ye. Let 
there be no more noise aboard this wessel, I beg; otherwise you’ll 
be having my crew shoving down into the cabin to know what’s 
happening. Give her your arm, sir,” he cried, addressing me, “ and 
lead her to the gangway. Your boat’ll be retarned by this time.” 

My arm ! thought 1. Egad, I’d liefer snug the paw of a tigress 
under my elbow ! 

“ Wilfrid,” I exclaimed, “ let me exhort you to go on deck and 
take Miss Jennings with you. I am sure Lady Monson will listen 
to my representations. It is due to her to remember that we are 
four, and that she stands alone, and that the suddenness, the unex- 
pectedness of this visit scarcely gives her a chance fully to realize 
what has come about and to form an intelligent decision.” 

She uttered a short hysterical laugh, without a smile, while her 
face glimmered white with rage in the gloom of the c^bin, “ M^ 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


273 


decision is quite intelligent enough to satisfy me,” she said, in a 
voice so irritatingly scornful that it is out of my power to furnish 
the least idea of it, while she looked at me as though she would 
strike me dead with her eyes ; “ I mean to remain here.” 

“ No, mum, no,” growled Captain Crimp. 

“You know, I presume. Lady Monson,” said I, “that Colonel 
Hope-Kennedy has gone on board the Bride 

“ I do not care,” she answered. “ Captain Crimp, I insist upon 
your requesting these people to leave me.” 

“ Come !” cried Wilfrid, furiously, and he grasped her by the arm. 

She released herself with a shriek and struck him hard on the 
face ; a painful and disgusting scene was threatened ; Miss Jennings 
was crying bitterly ; I dreaded the madman in Wilfrid, and sprang 
between them as he grasped his wife’s arm again. 

“For God’s sake, Wilfrid!” I began, but was silenced by her 
shrieks. She sent up scream after scream, wrestling with her hus- 
band, whose grip of steel I was powerless to relax, and who, with a 
purple face and a devilish grin of insanity upon his lips, was drag- 
ging her towards the door. On a sudden she seemed to suffocate ; 
she beat the air wildly with her arm that was free, then clapped her 
hand to her heart, swayed a little, and fell to the deck. I was just 
in time to save her head from striking the hard plank, and there she 
lay in a dead faint. 

18 


274 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE DUEL. 

“ This is our chance,” exclaimed Captain Crimp ; “ she’ll go qui- 
etly now. She might have done it afore, though. Let’s bear a 
hand, or she’ll be reviving.” 

“ Wilfrid, see if our boat’s alongside, will you ?” I cried, anxious 
to get him out of the way, and to correct as far as possible the un- 
mistakable mood of madness that had come upon him with Lady 
Monson’s insults and blow, by finding him occupation, “and send 
Finn to help us, and let the men stand by, ready to receive the lady.” 

He cast a look of fury at his wife as she lay motionless on the 
deck, her head supported on my arm, and sped away in long strides, 
chattering to himself as he went. 

“ Is she dead ?” cried Miss Jennings in a voice of terror, and her 
ashen face streaming. 

“Bless us, no!” said I; “a downright faint, and thank goodness 
for it. Now, captain.” 

How between us we managed to carry her on deck I’m sure I do 
not know. Captain Crimp had her by the feet, I by the shoulders, 
and Miss Laura helped to keep the apparently lifeless woman’s head 
to its bearings. She was as limber as though struck by lightning, 
and the harder to carry for that reason — a noble figure, as I have 
said, and deucedly heavy to boot. My part was the hardest, for I 
had to step backward and mount the companion-ladder, that was 
almost perpendicular, crab fashion. The captain and I swayed to- 
gether, staggering and perspiring, bothered excessively by the un- 
gainly rolling of the bark, both of us nearly dead with heat, and 
I half suffocated besides by the abominable acid stench from the 
hold. We were animated, however, into uncommon exertions by 
the desire to get her over the side before she recovered; and the 
fear of her awakening and resisting us, and shrieking out and the 
like, gave us, I reckon, for that particular job the strength of four 
men. We conveyed her to the gangway, helped by Finn, who re- 
ceived us at the companion-hatch, and with infinite pains handed 
her over the side, still motionless jn her swoon, into the bo^t, A 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


275 


hard task it was ; we dare not call out, for fear of reviving her, and 
the melancholy business was carried through by signs and gestures, 
topped oS with sundry hoarse whispered orders from Finn. 

I paused, panting, ray face burning like fire, while Captain Crimp 
looked to be slowly dissolving, the perspiration literally streaming 
from his fingers’ ends onto the deck, as though he were a figure of 
snow gradually wasting. 

“Why couldn’t she have fainted away at first?” he muttered to 
me. “ That’s the worst of women ; they’re always so slow a-raaking 
up their minds.” 

Now that she was in the boat the trouble was at an end ; though 
she recovered consciousness she could not regain the bark’s deck, 
and there was no power in her screams to hinder the yachtsmen’s 
oars from sweeping her to the Bride. Preserve me ! what a picture 
it all made just then ! The wild-haired, wild-eyed, semi-nude figures 
of the bark’s crew overhanging the rail to view Lady Monson as 
she lay, white and corpse-like, in the bottom of the boat ; the sober, 
concerned faces of our own men ; Wilfrid’s savage, crazy look as he 
waited, with his eyes fixed upon his yacht, for Miss Laura to be 
handed down before entering the boat himself ; the prostrate form 
of his wife with her head pillowed on Finn’s jacket, her eyes half 
opened, disclosing the whites only, and imparting the completest 
imaginable aspect of death to her countenance, with its pale lips 
and marble brow and cheek bleached into downright ghastliness by 
contrast of the luxuriant black hair that had fallen in tresses from 
under her hat. The men who had belonged to the Shark stood in 
a little group near the foremast looking on, but with a commiserat- 
ing, respectful air. One of them stepped up to us as Miss Laura 
was in the act of descending the side, and addressing Finn while he 
touched his cap, exclaimed, “ We should be glad, sir, if you’d take 
us aboard the Bride. We’ll heartily tarn to with the rest; you’ll 
find us all good men.” 

“ No !” roared Wilfrid, whipping round upon him, “ I want no 
man that has had anything to do with the Shark aboard my ves- 
sel.” 

The fellow fell back muttering. My cousin turned to Captain 
Crimp. 

“ Sir,” he cried, “ I thank you for your friendly offices.” He pro- 
duced a pocket-book. “You have acted the part of an honest man, 
sir. I am obliged to you. I trust that this may satisfy all charges 
for the maintenance of Lady Monson on board your ship.” He 


276 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


handed him a Bank of England note; Crimp turned the corner 
down to look at the figure — I believe it was for a hundred pounds — 
and then buried it in his breeches-pocket. 

“ I’m mighty obliged to you — mighty obliged,” he exclaimed. 
“ It’s a deal more’n the job’s worth. I’d like to see my way to wish- 
ing you happiness” — and he was proceeding, but Wilfrid stopped 
him by dropping over the side, calling to me to make haste. 

“Captain Crimp,” I said, hurriedly, “you will please keep your 
bark hove-to as she is now for the present. There’s to be a duel ; 
you of course know that.” He nodded. “You also heard the 
promise made to Colonel Hope-Kennedy, that after the duel he is 
to be at liberty to return to your vessel.” 

“ My God ! then I don’t think he will, for the guv’nor means to 
shoot him,” said Captain Crimp, “ and I’ll wager what he guv me 
that he’ll do it too, and sarve ’ira right. Running away with an- 
other man’s wife ! Ain’t there enough single gals in the world to 
suit the likes of that there colonel ? But I’ll keep hove-to as you 
ask.” 

All this he mumbled in my ear as I put my foot over the side, 
waiting for the wash of the swell to float the boat up before drop- 
ping. We then shoved off. 

We had scarcely measured a boat’s length, however, from the 
bark’s side when Lady Monson stirred, opened and shut her eyes, 
drew a long, fluttering breath, then started up, leaning on her elbow 
staring about her. She gazed at the men, at me, at her husband 
and sister, with her wits abroad, but intelligence seemed to rush into 
her eyes like fire when her sight encountered the yacht. I thought 
to myself what will she do now? — Jump overboard? Go into hys- 
terics? Swoon away again? — I watched her keenly, though furtive- 
ly, prepared to arrest any passionate movement in her, for there had 
come a wilder look in her face than ever I had seen in Wilfrid’s. 
My cousin sat like a figure of stone, his gaze riveted to his schoon- 
er, and Miss Laura glanced at her sister wistfully, but, as one saw, 
on the alert to avoid meeting her gaze. 

I could very well understand now that this fair, gentle, golden- 
haired girl should have held her tall, dark, imperious, tragic-eyed 
sister in awe. 

I know I felt heartily afraid of her myself as I sat pretending not 
to notice her, though in an askant way I was taking her in from 
head to foot, feeling mightily curious to see what sort of a person 
she was, and I was exceedingly thankful that the yacht lay within a 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


27*7 


few minutes of us. But happily there was to be no “ scene.” She 
saw how things stood, and with an air of haughty dignity rose from 
the bottom of the boat and seated herself in the place I vacated for 
her, turning her face seaward to conceal it from the men. Nobody 
but a woman possessed of her excellent harmonious shape could have 
risen unaided with the grace, I may say the majesty, of motion she 
exhibited from the awkward, prostrate posture in which she had lain. 
The bitter, sarcastic sneer upon her lip paralyzed in me the imme- 
diate movement of my mind to offer her my hand. She seemed to 
float upward to her full height as a stage dancer of easy and exqui- 
site skill rises to her feet from a recumbent attitude. I might well 
believe that many men would find her face fascinating, though it 
was not one that I could fall in love with. She was out and away 
handsomer than her picture represented her, spite of the traces which 
yet lingered of suffering, privation, and distress of mind such as 
shipwreck, and even a day’s tossing about in an open boat, might 
produce. 

Not a syllable was uttered by any one of us as the flashing oars 
of the rowers swept us to the Bride. The sailors, with instinctive 
good feeling, stared to right and left at their dripping and sparkling 
blades as though absorbed by contemplation of the rise and fall of 
the sand-white lengths of ash. Finn at the yoke-lines sat with a 
countenance of wood. We buzzed foaming to the accommodation- 
ladder. I was the first to spring out, and stood waiting to hand 
Lady Monson onto the steps ; but without taking the least notice of 
me she exclaimed, addressing her sister in a low but distinctly audi- 
ble voice, “ Take me at once to your cabin,” and so saying she 
stepped onto the ladder. I helped Miss Laura out of the boat, and 
then they both passed through the gangway, and I saw n*o more of 
them. Wilfrid mounted slowly at my heels, I passed my arm through 
his and walked him aft. He made as if he would resist, then came 
passively enough, sighing deeply as though his heart had broken. 

“ Wilfrid,” I said, gently, “ a hard and bitter part of the project 
of your voyage is ended. You have regained your wife — your one 
desire is fulfilled — why not, then, abandon the rest of your pro- 
gramme? Yonder bark will be kept hove-to until we hail her to say 
that she may proceed. Colonel Hope-Kennedy does not want to 
fight you. Let me go to him and arrange that he shall return to 
that vessel forthwith. I abhor the notion of a duel between you. 
Your end has been achieved bloodlessly ; your baby has such a claim 
upon your life that if you will but give a moment’s thought to the 


278 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


significance of it, you would not, you dare not, turn a deaf ear to 
the infant’s appeal. Consider again, we are without a surgeon ; there 
is no medical help here for the sufferer, be he you or be he your 
enemy. This colonel, again, is without a second. Wilfrid, in the 
name of God, let him go ! He may reach England, and will meet 
you ashore, if you desire it ; but between then and now there will 
be abundance of time for you to consider whether there is any occa- 
sion for you to give the scoundrel a chance of completing the injury 
he has already dealt you by sending a bullet through your heart.” 

He listened to me with wonderful patience, his head bowed, his 
eyes rooted on the deck, his hands clasped in front of him. I was 
flattering myself that I had produced something of the impression I 
desired to make, when, lifting his face, he looked slowly round at 
me, and said quietly, almost softly, “ Charles, I shall not love you 
less for your advice. You speak out of the fulness of your heart. 
I thank you, dear cousin, for your kindness. And now do me this 
favor.” He pulled out his watch and let his eye rest on it for a 
brief pause, but I doubt if he took note of the hour. “ Go to Colo- 
nel Hope-Kennedy and make all necessary arrangements for our 
meeting as soon as possible. See Captain Finn, and request him to 
send the sailors below when the appointed time arrives. Come to 
my cabin and let me know the result. Colonel Hope-Kennedy shall 
have choice of the pistols in my case, and, seeing that he has no 
second any more than I have, for your office will simply consist in 
chalking the distance and in giving the signal, he must load for 
himself.” 

He took my hand in both his, pressed it hard, and then, without 
a word, walked to the companion and disappeared. Captain Finn, 
who had been watching us from a distance, waiting till our conver- 
sation had ended, now walked up to me. 

“ Can you tell me his honor’s wishes, sir?” he inquired. “I suppose, 
now that he has fallen in with her ladyship, he’ll be heading home?” 

“ Let the yacht lie as she is for the present, Finn,” said I; “no 
need to hoist in the boat either. She cannot hurt herself alongside 
in this smooth water. We may be wanting her shortly to convey 
Colonel Hope-Kennedy to the bark. Sir Wilfrid means to fight 
him, and at once. I would give half what I am worth to avert this 
meeting, but my cousin is resolved, and I must stand by him.” 

“ Sir,” said Finn, “ he has been cruelly used.” 

“ When the time comes,” I continued, “ he wishes the men to be 
sent below. You will see to that.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 




“ Oh yes. But I dorn’t think the helm should be desarted, sir.” 

“Certainly not,” I exclaimed. “Arrange it thus: let Mr. Crimp 
hold the wheel. I must have help at hand, for one of the men may 
fall badly wounded. Therefore stay you on deck. Captain Finn, 
and keep by me within easy hail. Cutbill is also a strong, service- 
able fellow in such an emergency as this. Post him at the fore- 
hatch to hinder any man from popping his head up to look. I shall 
thus have two — you and him — to assist me.” 

“ Right, sir,” he exclaimed, touching his cap. 

“ Better mark oS the ground, or deck rather, at once,” said I ; 
“ fetch me a piece of chalk, Finn.” 

He went forward, and in a few moments returned with what I 
required. A broad awning sheltered the whole of the quarter-deck 
that lay gleaming white as the flesh of the cocoanut in the soft, 
almost violet-hued shadow. There was just air enough stirring aloft 
to keep the lighter cloths quiet and to provide against the yacht 
being slued or revolved by the run of the long, delicate, tropic swell. 
I said to Finn, after considering a little, and anxiously observing 
the effects of the sunshine gushing through the blue air between the 
edge of the awning and the bulwark-rail, or rising off the sea in a 
trembling flashing that whitened the air above it, “ I don’t think it 
will matter which side of the quarter-deck we choose. The men 
must toss for position. But there’s a dazzle on the water off the 
port bow that might bother the eye that faces forward. Better 
mark the starboard side therefore.” 

He gazed thoughtfully around, and said, “The yacht’s position 
can be altered, if you like, sir.” 

I answered : “ No ; leave her as she is. She rolls regularly and 
quietly thus.” 

I had never before been concerned in a duel, and, in the matter 
of the strict etiquette of this sort of encounter, was entirely at a loss 
how to act. However, I had always understood that twelve paces 
were the prescribed distance ; so, ruling a line athwart ships almost 
abreast of the main-mast, I made twelve steps, and then scored an- 
other line crosswise, measuring the interval a second time, and find- 
ing that it was very fairly twelve of my own paces. The men had 
come together in a crowd forward, and w^ere staring aft with all 
their might. They knew perfectly well what was going to take 
place, and they were not yet sensible that they were not to be ad- 
mitted to the spectacle. It was to be something of a far more 
wildly exciting sort than catching a shark — ay, or even, maybe, of 


280 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


seeing a man liung at a ship’s yard-arm. It put a sort of sickness 
into me, somehow, to witness that swarm of whiskered mahogany- 
cheeked faces, all looking thirstily, expectation shaping every post- 
ure, with a kind of swimming of the whole body of them, too, in 
the haze of heat into which the yacht’s jib-boom went twisting in a 
manner to make the brain dizzy to watch it. One ne^r gets to see 
how thoroughly animal human nature is at bottom until one has 
examined the expression of the countenances of a mob, big or little, 
assembled in expectation of witnessing human suffering. 

I stepped below. Colonel Hope-Kennedy sat bareheaded at the 
cabin-table, supporting his head on his right elbow, and drumming 
softly with the fingers of his left hand. I approached him, and 
giving him a bow, which he returned with an air of great dignity 
— men are amazingly polite when arranging the terras of some cut- 
throat job — I said, “ It is ray painful duty, sir, to inform you that 
my cousin desires the meeting between you and him should take 
place at once.” 

“ Not a moment need be lost so far as I am concerned,” he an- 
swered, gazing at me steadfastly with eyes that looked like por- 
celain, with the singular glaze that seemed to have come suddenly 
upon them. 

“ My cousin requests me to state,” I continued, “ that you will 
consider him as acting without a second equally with yourself. My 
unhappy office will consist simply in giving the signal to fire. I 
would to God that my influence had been powerful enough with 
him to arrest his resolution at this point — ” 

“It could not have prevailed with me,” he exclaimed. “The 
madman’s blow was needless. On what part of the yacht do we 
fight?” 

“ On the quarter-deck,” I answered. 

“ Measured by you ?” 

I bowed. 

“As there are no seconds,” he said, “ I presume we load for our- 
selves ?” 

“ That is Sir Wilfrid Monson’s suggestion,” I answered. 

“ Have you the pistols, sir?^’ 

“ I will fetch them.” 

I went at once to Wilfrid’s berth and knocked, and walked in 
without waiting for him to tell me to enter. He was writing in his 
diary ; he instantly threw down his pen and jumped from his chair. 

“ Is all ready, Charles ?” he asked. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


^81 


“ Your pistols are identical, I believe ?” said I. 

“ Exactly alike,” he answered. 

“ Then Colonel Hope-Kennedy’s choice,” said I, “ cannot furnish 
him with any advantage over you by his choosing, I mean with a 
soldier’s experience, the preciser weapon ?” 

“ There is not an atom of difference between them,” he exclaim- 
ed. “Yonder’s the case, Charles; take it, and let the scoundrel 
choose for himself.” 

He could not have spoken more coolly had he been giving me 
the most commonplace instructions. I remember wondering, while 
I looked at him and listened to him, whether he actually realized 
his own intention ; yet I should have known better than this if only 
for the meaning his face conveyed, and for a note in his voice that 
made every accent hard and steady. He said, “When you are ready 
ring the hand-bell on the table ; I will then join you.” 

“ But you will charge your own pistol,” said I ; “ so I must return 
with the weapon after the colonel has made his choice.” 

“ No,” he exclaimed ; “ carry the case on deck, and load for me.” 

“ Very well,” said I, wearily, and sick at heart, and devoutly wish- 
ing that some heavy black squall would come thundering down on 
the yacht as the precursor of a gale of wind and delay this wretched 
business, for the present anyway, I took the pistol-case and returned 
it to Colonel Hope-Kennedy. He slightly glanced at the fire-arms, 
and said, with a faint smile, “ They are an elegant brace of weapons. 
Either will do for me.” 

“ Will you load on deck or here, sir ?” said I. 

“ Here, if you please.” 

He extracted one of the pistols, poised it in his hand, toying a 
moment or two with it, tried the trigger once or twice, then loaded 
it, fitting the cap to the nipple with fingers in which I could not 
discern the least tremor. He then returned the pistol to the case. 
Both of us would know which one he had handled very well, as it 
lay against the side upon which the lid locked. 

“ Have you a surgeon on board ?” he inquired. 

I answered no. He looked a little anxious, and exclaimed, “ No 
one of any kind qualified to deal with a wound?” Again I an- 
swered no. He seemed to wince at this ; the only expression of un- 
easiness I had witnessed in him. Finding he asked no more ques- 
tions, I said, “ If you are ready, sir, I will summon my cousin.” 

“ I am ready,” he replied. 

On this I rang the little hand-bell that stood upon the table, and 


282 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


in a minute Wilfrid came out. In grim silence we mounted the 
companion-steps, my cousin leading the way, the colonel next, and I 
at his heels, with the pistol-case under my arm and a very lively 
sense of murder in my heart. All was hushed where the ladies 
were. Whether Miss Laura guessed what was going forward I 
know not, but I was very thankful that she remained hidden, since, 
in the face of the colonel’s coolness, it was most important that 
nothing should imperil Wilfrid’s composure. The yacht’s decks 
were deserted save by the figures of the men who it had been ar- 
ranged were to remain. Forward at the hatch conducting to the 
forecastle stood the tall burly figure of Cutbill; close beside the 
cabin skylight was Finn, pale, agitated, his mouth working in the 
middle of his face as though he were rehearsing a long speech ; 
Crimp grasped the wheel. Heaven knows how it was that I should 
have found eyesight for small outside features of such a scene as 
this at that moment, but I clearly recollect observing that sour old 
Jacob, with a view, mayhap, of supporting his spirits, had thrust 
an immense quid into his cheek, the angle whereof stood out like a 
boil or a formidable bruise against the clear gleam of sky past him 
up and down which the courtesying of the yacht slid his squab, 
homely figure, and I also observed that he gnawed upon this junk 
with an energy that suggested a mind in an advanced stage of 
distraction. 

I said to the colonel, “ It will be satisfactory to myself, sir, if you 
will kindly measure the distance I have chalked.” 

His eye swiftly ran from line to line, and then giving me a slight 
bow he said, nonchalantly, “ I am quite satisfied.” 

“ With regard to the light,” I continued, looking from him to 
Wilfrid, “ you will decide for yourselves, gentlemen, which end of 
the vessel you will face.” 

“It is immaterial,” said the colonel, with a slight shrug. 

' “ Then,” said Wilfrid, “ I will have my back to the wheel.” 

I could not be sure that he was well advised, for the blue dazzle 
of sunshine past the awning would throw out his figure into clear 
relief, as I noticed Crimp’s was projected, clean lined as a shadow 
cast by the moonlight on a white deck. 

“ It may be as well to toss for position,” I said. 

“ No,” cried Wilfrid, “ I am content.” 

I loaded his pistol and handed the weapons to the men. My 
heart thumped like a coward’s in my breast, but I strove hard to 
conceal my agitation for Wilfrid’s sake. Each took up his respect- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


283 


ive post, and both held their pistols at level. The colonel exclaimed, 
“Tell your mad relative to feather-edge himself. He is all front. 
’Tis too irrational to take advantage of.” 

Wilfrid heard him and cried out, “Let him look to himself. 
Ready with the signal, Charles.” 

I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief, and as I did so old Crimp 
suddenly let go the wheel and came skimming up to Finn, rumbling 
out, in a voice half choked with tobacco- juice, that the gent’s pistol 
(meaning the colonel’s) was upon him full, and that he wasn’t going 
to be made cold beef of for any man. 

“ Ready, gentlemen !” I cried, and desirous of emphasizing the 
signal, lest the colonel’s keener sight should witness the fall of the 
handkerchief before the flutter of it caught Wilfrid’s eye, I called 
out ^^Now r and the handkerchief fell to the deck. 

There was one report only ; it was like the sharp crack of a whip. 
For the instant I did not know which man’s pistol had exploded, 
but the little curl of smoke at Wilfrid’s end told me that it was his. 
I saw the colonel fling his arms up, and his weapon flashed as he 
seemed to Are it straight into the air. “Good God, how gener- 
ous !” was the thought that swept through me ; “ he will not fight!” 
He continued holding his pistol elevated while you could have 
counted ten, with a slight backward leaning posture and an inde- 
scribable look in his face, absolutely as though he were endeavoring 
to follow the flight of the bullet; his weapon then fell to the deck, 
he made a clutch with both hands at his heart, with a deep groan 
sank — his knees yielding — and, with his hands still at his heart, 
dropped, as a wooden figure might, on his side, and lay without 
motion. 

Finn and I rushed up to him. While the skipper freed his neck 
I grasped his wrist, but found it pulseless. Yet it was diflScult to 
credit that he was dead. His face was as reposeful as that of a 
sleeper. There was no look whatever of pain in it — nay, such faint 
distinguishable expression as I remember had the air of a light 
smile. I opened his coat, and found a small perforation in the shirt 
under the right arm ; the orifice was as cleanly clipped as though 
made with a pair of scissors. There was no blood. 

“Dead, sir!” exclaimed Finn. “A noble-looking gentleman, too. 
A pity, a pity ! How gents of this kind stand upon their honor ! 
yet they’re the people to break up homes.” 

“ Call Cutbill,” said I, “ and let the body be taken below.” 

I rose from my knees and walked aft to Wilfrid, who remained 


284 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


standing at the chalked line, his arm that grasped the pistol hanging 
by his side. There was a kind of lifting look in his face, that with 
his swelled nostrils and large protruding eyes and a curve of the up- 
per lip, that was made a sarcastic sneer of by the peculiar projection 
of the under one, indicated a mood of scornful triumph, of exulta- 
tion subdued by contempt. 

“ You have killed your man, Wilfrid,” said I. 

“I have shot him through the heart,” said he, talking like one 
newly aroused from his slumber and still in process of collecting his 
mind. 

“Most probably. You hit him in some vital part, anyway. He 
dropped dead.” 

“ He made sure of killing me ; I saw it in his cold, deliberate 
way of covering me.” He laughed harshly and mirthlessly. “ He’ll 
trouble no other man’s peace. I’ve merely liberated the spirit of a 
devil that is now winging its way on black, bat-like wings back to 
that hell it came from. There will be disappointment among the 
fiends. That fellow there,” nodding at the body over which Cutbill 
and Finn were bending, “ was good at least for another twenty years 
of scoundrelism. What are they going to do with him ?” 

“ Carry him below.” 

“Finn!” he called. 

“ Sir,” answered the skipper, looking up from the body, whose 
arms he grasped. 

“ Hide it in some forward cabin, and if stone-dead, as Mr. Monson 
declares, get it stiched up. I’ll tell you when to bury him.” 

“ Ay, ay, sir,” answered Finn, promptly, but looking shocked nev- 
ertheless. 

My cousin handed me his pistol. As he did so his manner 
changed ; a broken-hearted look — I do not know how else to de- 
scribe the expression — entered his face. He drew a long, deep 
breath, like to the sigh of a sufferer from some exquisite throe, and 
said, in a low voice, trembling with the tears which pressed close be- 
hind, “ his death does not return to me what he has taken from me. 
With him go my honor, my peace of mind, the love that was my 
wife’s — all gone — all gone 1” he muttered. “ My God 1” he almost 
shrieked, “how blank has the world become, now that he lies 
there.” 

“Be advised by me, Wilfrid,” said I; “withdraw to your cabin 
and rest. This has been a terrible morning — enough to last out a 
lifetime has been crowded into it. You met him bravely, fairly, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


285 


honorably. He has paid the penalty of his infamy ; and though 
Heaven knows I would have gone to any lengths to avert this meet- 
yGtj since it has happened, I thank God your life is preserved, 
and that you have come out of it unharmed.” 

His eyes moistened and he took my hand ; but just then Cutbill 
and Finn came staggering towards the companion-hatch, bearing the 
body between them, on which he walked hastily to the rail and 
stood peering over into the water, supporting his temples in his 
hands. 

Jacob Crimp had resumed his hold of the wheel. I went up to 
him. “ I’ll keep the helm steady,” said I, “ while you wipe out 
those chalk-marks on the deck. Meanwhile pick up that pistol yon- 
der and bring me the case off the skylight.” 

While he did this we were hailed from the bark. She lay close 
to us, with her sailors in a crowd about the fore-rigging, where they 
had been standing, attentive spectators of the duel. “ Beg pardon,” 
bawled Captain Crimp, erect on the rail and steadying himself by 
a backstay, “ but I should be glad to know if the gent’s coming 
aboard ?” 

I shouted back, “ No ; you need not wait for him.” 

The man tossed his arm with a gesture very significant of a 
growling “ Well, well !” and then, with a flourish of his hat, he cried, 
“ A lucky run home to ’ee, gentlemen all !” dismounted, and fell to 
singing out orders. His wild-looking crew ran about, the main-top- 
sail yard slowly swung round, and presently the deeply laden, mal- 
odorous craft, rolling clumsily upon a swell to whose light summer 
heavings our yacht was courtesying with fairy grace, was heading 
round to her course, blurring the water at her bows to the blowing 
of the mild breeze that had scarcely power enough to lift her fore- 
sail. 

Finn and Cutbill arrived on deck, and Wilfrid on seeing them 
went below. 

“ Better turn the hands up, I suppose, now, sir ?” said Finn to me. 
“ There’ll be nothin’ more, your honor, that’ll be onfit for them to 
see.” 

By all means. Captain Finn ; and then get the boat hoisted and 
a course shaped for home, for our quest is over, and we have made 
southing enough. Heaven knows !” 

Cutbill went forward. There is a magic in the mere sound of 
homeward hound that would put a jocund nimbleness into the pro- 
portions of a marine Falstaff. Cutbill tried to walk and look as 


286 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


though he were sensible that death lay under his feet, and that the 
shadow of a dreadful event hung dark upon the yacht, but scarce 
was he abreast of the galley when his spirits proved too much for 
him, and he measured the rest of the deck in several gleesome, 
floundering jumps, pounding the scuttle with a capstan bar that he 
snatched up, and roaring out, “ All hands trim sail for home !” The 
men came tumbling up as though the yacht’s forecastle were vomit- 
ing sailors, and in a breath the lustrous decks of the Bride were full 
of life, color, and movement. 

A man came to the wheel. I lingered a minute or two to ex- 
change a few words with Finn. 

“You are sure the colonel is dead?” 

“ Ay, sir ; he’ll be no deader a thousand years hence.” 

“ A bloody morning’s work, Finn ! I feel heart-sick, as though 
I had shared in the assassination of a man. But since it was bound 
to end in one or the other’s death, ’tis best as it is. Have you any 
particulars of the foundering of the Shark 

“ The yarn her people — I mean the surwivors aboard the bark — 
spun our men while they lay alongside was that they met with a 
gale of wind that, after blowing with hurricane fury for two days 
and two nights, ended in dismasting ’em. The fall of the main- 
mast ripped the plank out of the deck as clean as though ship- 
wrights had been at work there. Then the pounding of the wreck- 
age alongside started a butt, and she took in Water faster than they 
could pump it out. There were boats enough for all hands and to 
spare, and they had just time to get away when the Shark foun- 
dered. ’Twas blowing hard then and a high sea running, and before 
it came on dark the boats had lost sight of one another. The colo- 
nel and her ladyship were together, along with five sailors, one of 
whom fell overboard on the second day and was drownded. They 
was three days and four nights washing about afore the 'Liza Rob- 
bins fell in with them. That’s all I got to hear, sir; but I suppose 
it’s the true yarn right enough.” 

“ I dare say they encountered much such weather as we met 
with,” said I ; “ the same straight-lined storm thundering up from 
the south, for all one knows. Well, now, Finn, drive us home as 
fast as ever you can. Bowl her along — we’ve all had enough of it. 
In what berth have you placed the body ?” 

“ In the one that was occupied by his honor’s walet, sir.” 

I gave him a nod, and, with the pistol-case under my arm, de- 
scended the steps and went to my cabin, 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


287 


CHAPTER XXV. 

THE colonel’s FUNERAL. 

On entering my berth I threw myself into my bunk and sat in it 
in such a despondent condition of mind as I had never before been 
sensible of. This, to be sure, signified no more than reaction fol- 
lowing the wild excitement I had been under all the morning. But, 
let the cause be what it might, while the fit was on me I felt ab- 
jectly miserable and a complete wretch. It then occurred to me 
that hunger might have something to do with my mood, seeing 
that no food had crossed my lips since dinner-time on the preceding 
day. 

It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. I entered the cabin 
and found a cold lunch upon the table, not a dish of which had 
been touched, proving that there were others besides myself who 
were fasting. I was without appetite, but I sat down resolutely, 
and calling to the steward — who seemed thankful to have an order 
to attend to — to bring me a bottle of Burgundy, I fell to, and pres- 
ently found myself tolerably hearty ; the fountain of my spirits un- 
sealed afresh, and beginning leisurely to bubble into the channel 
that had run dry. There is no better specific in the world for a fit 
of the blues than a bottle of Burgundy. No other wine has its art 
of tender blandishments. It does not swiftly exhilarate, but courts 
the brain into a pleasing serenity by a process of coaxing at once 
elegant and convincing. 

While I sat fondling my glass, leaning back in my chair with my 
eyes fixed upon the delicate, graceful paintings on the cabin ceiling, 
and my mind revolving, but no longer blackly and weepingly, the 
grim incidents which had crowded the morning, I heard my name 
pronounced close at my ear, and, whipping round, found Miss Laura 
at my elbow. 

“ I have been most anxious to see you,” she exclaimed. “ What 
is the news ?” 

“ Have not you heard ?” I inquired. 

“ I have heard nothing but two pistol-shots. I have seen nobody 
of wbopa I could ask a question.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


Ii88 


“Wilfrid has shot Colonel Hope-Kennedy through the heart,” 
said I, “ as he declared he would, and the body lies yonder and I 
pointed to the recess that Muffin had formerly occupied. 

“ Colonel Hope-Kennedy killed !” she exclaimed, in a low, breath- 
less, terrified voice ; and she sank into a chair beside me, and leaned 
her face on her hand, speechless, and her eyes fixed upon the table. 

“Better that he should have been shot than Wilfrid,” said I. 
“ But he is dead ; of him then let us speak nothing since we can- 
not speak good. I have just succeeded in fighting myself out of a 
hideous mood of melancholy with the help of yonder bottle. Now 
you must let me prescribe for you. You have eaten nothing since 
dinner yesterday. I therefore advise a glass of champagne and a 
slice of the breast of cold fowl and that she might not say no, I 
put on an air of bustle, called to the steward to immediately open a 
pint bottle of champagne, helped her to a little piece of the fowl, 
and finding her still reluctant, gently insinuated a knife and fork 
into her hands. “We are homeward bound,” said I: “see! the 
sun has slipped t’other side of the yacht. Our bowsprit points 
directly for dear old Southampton Water. So,” said I, filling a 
glass of champagne and handing it to her, “ you must absolutely 
drink to our prosperous voyage, not only to the ship that goes, but 
to the wind that blows, while,” said I, helping myself to another 
small dose of Burgundy, “ I’ll drink the lass that loves a sailor.” 

She could not forbear a slight smile, drank, and then ate a little, 
and presently I saw how much good it did her by the manner in 
which she plucked up her heart. I asked her where Lady Monson 
was. 

“ In my cabin,” she answered ; “ she will not speak to me ; she 
asks my maid for what she requires ; she will not even look at me.” 

“ It is all too fresh yet,” said I. “ A little patience, Miss Jen- 
nings. The woman in her will break through anon : there will be 
tears, kisses, contrition. Who knows ?” 

She shook her head. Just then I caught sight of the maid and 
beckoned to her, exclaiming to Miss Laura, “Your sister must not 
be allowed to starve. I fear she will have known what hunger is 
aboard Captain Crimp’s odious old bark, where the choicest table 
delicacy probably was rancid salt pork. Here,” said I, to the maid, 
“get me a tray. Steward, open another bottle of champagne. You 
will smile at the cook-like view I take of human misery. Miss Jen- 
nings,” said I ; “ but let me tell you that a good deal of the com- 
plexion the mind wears is shed upon it by the body.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


289 


I filled the tray the maid brought, and bade her carry it to her 
ladyship, and to let her suppose it was prepared by the steward. I 
then thought of Wilfrid, and told Miss Laura that I would visit him. 
“ But you will stop here till I return,” said I. “ I want you to cheer 
me up.” 

I went to my cousin’s cabin and knocked very softly. The berth oc- 
cupied by Lady Monson was immediately opposite, and the mere no- 
tion of her being so near made me move with a certain stealth, though 
I could not have explained why I did so. There was no response, 
so, after knocking a second time very lightly and obtaining no reply, 
I entered. Wilfrid lay in his bunk. The port-hole was wide open, 
and a pleasant draught of air breezed into the cabin. lie lay in his 
shirt, the collar of which was wide open, and a pair of silk drawers — 
flat on his back — his arms crossed upon his breast, like the figure of a 
knight on a tomb, and his eyes closed. I was startled at first sight 
of him, but quickly perceived that his breast rose and fell regularly, 
and that, in short, he was in a sound sleep. Quite restful his slum- 
ber was not, for while I stood regarding him he made one or two 
wry faces, frowned, smiled, muttered, but without any nervous starts 
or discomposure of his placid posture. I was seized with a fit of 
wonder, and looked about me for some signs of an opiate or for any 
Tiint of liquor that should account for this swift and easy repose, but 
there was nothing of the sort to be seen. He had fallen asleep as 
a tired child might, or as one who, having accomplished some great 
object through stress of bitter toil and distracting vigil, lightly pil- 
lows his head with a thanksgiving that he has seen the end. I re- 
turned to Miss Jennings marvelling much, and she was equally as- 
tonished. 

“ Conceive, Mr. Monson,” she exclaimed, “ that the whole may have 
passed out of his memory !” 

“ I wish I could believe it,” said I. “ No, he has just lain down as 
a boy might who is tired out and dropped asleep. A man is to be 
envied for being wrong-headed sometimes. If I had shot the colo- 
nel — but we agreed not to speak of him. Miss Jennings, you are 
better already. When you arrived just now you were white, your 
eyes were full of worry and care, you looked as if you would never 
smile again. Now the old sparkle is in your gaze, and now you 
smile once more, and your complexion has gathered afresh that gold- 
en delicacy which I must take the liberty of vowing as a friend I ad- 
mire as a most surprising perfection in you.” 

‘‘ Qh, Mr. Monson !” she oxclaimed, softly, with ono o,f t-h.osQ little 


290 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


pouts T was now used to, and glad to observe in her again, while 
something of color came into her cheeks, “ this is no time for com- 
pliments.” 

Nevertheless she did not seem ill -pleased, spite of her looking 
downward with a gravity that was above demureness. At that mo- 
ment Cutbill and Crimp came down the companion-ladder, pulling off 
their caps as they entered. The big sailor had a roll of what resem- 
bled sail-cloth under his arm. They passed forward and disappeared 
in the cabin that had been occupied by Muffin. Miss Laura noticed 
them, but made no remark. It was impossible that she should sus- 
pect their mission. But the sight of them darkened the brighter 
mood that had come to me out of the companionship of the girl, 
and I fell grave on a sudden. 

“ Will you share your cabin with your sister ?” I asked. 

“ No ; she cannot bear my presence. My maid will prepare for me 
the berth adjoining my old one. She must be humored. Who can 
express the agonies her pride is costing her?” 

“ I fear Wilfrid sleeps rather too close to her ladyship,” said I. 
“ There’s a cabin next mine. I should like to see him in it. Figure 
his taking it into his head, in an ungovernable fit of temper, to walk 
in upon his wife — ” 

“ If such an impulse as that visited him,” she answered, “ it would 
be all the same even if he should sleep among the crew forward. 
Do not anticipate trouble, Mr. Monson. The realities are fearful 
enough.” 

I smiled at her beseeching look. “ Lucky for your sister,” said I, 
“ that you are on board. She arrives without a stitch saving what 
she stands up in, and here she finds your wardrobe, the twoscore 
conveniences of the lady’s toilet-table, and a maid on top of it all, 
with pins and needles and scissors, bodkins and tape — bless me! 
what a paradise after the '‘Liza Rohhinsy And then I told her 
how the Shark was lost, giving her the yarn as I had it from Finn. 
“Anyway,” said I, “Lady Monson is rescued. Your desire is ful- 
filled.” 

“ But I did not wish her— I did not want Colonel Hope-Kennedy 
killed,” she exclaimed, with a shudder. 

“ Yet you could have shot him,” said I ; “do you remember our 
chat that night off the Isle of Wight?” 

“ Yes, perfectly well,” she answered. “ But now that he k dead 
— oh, it is too ten-ible to think of,” she added, with a sob in her 
voice. 


OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


291 


“ It must always be so with generous natures,” I exclaimed. 
“ What is abhorrent to them in life death converts into a pathetic 
appeal. Best perhaps to leave old Time to revenge one’s wrongs. 
And now that her ladyship is on board, what is Wilfrid going to do 
with her ?” 

“ She is never likely to leave her cabin,” she replied. 

“ When the Bride arrives home, then ?” 

“ I cannot tell.” 

“ Had Wilfrid’s misfortune been mine this is the consideration 
that would have stared me in the face from the very start, and hin- 
dered me from taking any step that did not conduct me straight to 
the Divorce Court.” 

Here her maid arrived and whispered to her, on which, giving me 
a pretty little sad smile, she rose and went to her cabin. I mounted 
to the deck and found the wide ocean shivering and flashing under 
a pleasant breeze of wind, whose hot buzzing as it hummed like the 
vast insect life of a tropic island through the rigging and into the 
canvas was cooled to the ear by the pleasant noise of running waters 
on either hand. My first look was for the "‘Liza Robbins, and I was 
not a little surprised to find her far away down upon our lee quarter, 
a mere dash of light of a moonlike hue. Finn was pacing the quar- 
ter-deck solemnly with a Sunday air upon him. On seeing me he 
approached with a ship-shape salute and exclaimed : 

“ I suppose there is no doubt, sir, his honor designs that we 
should be now steering for home ?” 

“ For what other part of the world, captain ?” 

“ Well, sir, at sea one wants instructions. Maybe Sir Wilfrid 
knows that we’re going home ?” 

“ He lies sleeping as soundly and peacefully, Finn, as a little boy 
in his cabin and knows nothing.” 

“Lor’ bless me!” cried Finn. 

“But you may take me as representing him,” said I, “ and I’ll be 
accountable for all misdirections. About the funeral, now. I ob- 
served Cutbill and Crimp pass through the cabin. They’ve gone to 
stitch the body up ?” 

“Yes, sir. His honor told me to get it done at once. ’Sides, 
’tain’t a part of the ocean in which ye can keep the like of them 
things long.” 

“ When do you mean to bury him ?” 

“Well, I thought to-night, sir, in the first watch. Better make a 
quiet job of it, I allow, for fear of—” f^nd screwing up his face into 


292 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


a peculiar look, he pointed significantly to the deck with clear refer- 
ence to Lady Monson. 

“ You are right, Finn. We have had ‘ scenes ’ enough, as scrim- 
mages are called by women.’’ 

“ Will your honor read the orfice ?” 

“D’ye mean the burial service? It will be hard to see print by 
lantern-light.” 

“ I’ve got it, sir, in a book with the letters as big as my fore- 
finger.” 

I considered a little, and then said, “ On reflection, no. You are 
captain of this ship, and it is for you, therefore, to read the service. 
I will be present, of course.” 

He looked a trifle dismayed, but said nothing more about it, and, 
after walking the deck with him for about half an hour, during which 
our talk was all about the Shark and the incidents of the morning, 
what the crew thought of the duel and the like, I went below to my 
berth, and lay down feeling tired, hot, and again depressed. I was 
awakened out of a light sleep by the ringing of the first dinner-bell. 
Having made ready for dinner I entered the cabin as the second bell 
sounded, and found the table prepared, but no one present. I was 
standing at the foot of the companion-ladder, trying to cool myself 
with the wind that breezed down of a fiery hue with the steadfast 
crimsoning of the westering sun, when Wilfrid came from his cabin. 
He was dressed as if for a ball — swallow-tailed coat, patent-leather 
boots, plenty of white shirt sparkling with diamond studs, and so 
forth. Indeed, it was easily seen that he had attired himself with a 
most fastidious hand, as though on a sudden there had broken out 
in him a craze of dandyism. I was much astonished, and stared at 
him. There had never been any ceremony among us ; in point of 
meals we had made a sort of picnic of this marine ramble and dined 
regardless of attire. Indeed, in this direction Wilfrid had always 
shown a singular negligence, often in cold weather sitting down in 
an old pilot-coat, or taking his place during the hot days in white 
linen coat and small clothes or an airy camlet jacket. 

“ Why, Wilf,” said I, running my eye over him, “you must give 
me ten minutes to keep you in countenance.” 

“ No, no,” he cried, “ you are very well. This is a festal day with 
me, a time to be dignified with as much ceremony as the modern 
tailor will permit. Heavens! how on great occasions one misses the 
magnificence of one’s forefathers. I should like to dine to-day in the 
costume of a Raleigh — a doublet bestudded with precious gems^ a 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


293 


sliort cloak of cloth of gold. Ha, ha! a plague on the French Rev- 
olution. ’Tis all broadcloth now — where’s Laura?” He asked the 
question with a sudden breaking away from the substance of his 
speech that startlingly accentuated the wild look his eyes had, and 
the expression of countenance that was a sort of baffling smile in its 
way. 

“ I do not know,” I answered. 

“Oh, she must dine with us,” he cried; “I want company. I 
should like to crowd this table. Steward, call Miss Jennings’s maid.” 

The man stole aft, and tapped on the cabin next to the room oc- 
cupied by Lady Monson. Miss Jennings opened the door and looked 
out, Wilfrid saw her, and instantly ran to her with his finger upon his 
lip. He took her by the hand and whispered. She was clearly as 
much amazed as I had been to behold him attired as thouo;h for a 
rout. There was a little whispered talk between them ; she appar- 
ently did not wish to join us; then on a sudden consented, and he 
led her to the table, holding her hand with an air of Old World cere- 
mony that must have provoked a smile but for the concern and anx- 
iety his looks caused me. We took our places, and he fell to acting 
the part of host, pressing us to eat, calling for champagne, talking 
as if to entertain us. He laughed often, but softly, in a low-pitched 
key, and one saw that there was a perpetual reference in his mind 
to the existence of his wife close at hand, but he never once men- 
tioned her, nor referred to the dead man whose proximity put an in- 
describable quality of ghastliness into his hectic manner, the crazy air 
of conviviality that flushed, as with a glow of fever, his speech and 
carriage and behavior of high breeding. Not a syllable concerning 
the events of the morning, the object of our excursion, its achieve- 
ment, the change of the yacht’s course, escaped him. He drank 
freely, but without any other result than throwing a little color upon 
his high cheek-bones, and rendering yet more puzzling the conflict- 
ing expressions which filled with wildness his large, protruding, 
near-sighted gaze at one or the other of us. I saw too clearly how 
it was with the poor fellow to feel shocked. Miss Laura’s tact 
served her well in the replies she made to him, in the interest with 
which she seemed to listen to his conversation, in her well-feigned 
ignorance of there being anything unusual in his apparel or manner. 
But it failed her in her efforts to conceal her deep-seated apprehen- 
sion, that stole like a shadow into her face when she looked down- 
ward in some interval of silence that enabled her to think, or when 
her eyes met mine. 


294 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


After dinner iny cousin fetched his pipe and asked me to join 
him on deck. I took advantage of his absence to say swiftly to 
Miss Laura, “ We must not forget that Lady Monson is on board. 
Upon my word, I believe you are right in your suggestion this after- 
noon that Wilfrid has forgotten all about it, or surely he would 
have made some reference to her dining.” 

“ I’ll take care that she is looked after, Mr. Monson,” she answered. 
“ I purposely abstained from mentioning her name at dinner. I am 
certain, by the expression in his face, that he would have been irri- 
tated by the lightest allusion to her; and unnatural as his mood is 
after such a morning as we have passed through,” here she glanced 
in the direction of the cabin where the colonel’s body lay, “ I would 
rather see him as he is than sullen, scowling, silent, eating up his 
heart.” 

He returned with his pipe at that moment, and we were about to 
proceed on deck when he stopped, and said to his sister-in-law, 
“ Come along, Laura, my love.” 

“ I have a slight headache, Wilfrid, and I have to see that ray 
cabin is prepared.” 

I thought this answer would start him into questioning her, but 
he looked as if he did not gather the meaning of it. “ Pooh, pooh !” 
he cried, “ there are two stewards and a maid to see to your cabin 
for you. If they don’t suffice, we’ll have Muffin aft — that arthritic 
son of a green-grocer, whose genius as a valet will scarcely be the 
worse for the tar that stains his hands. Muffin for one night only !” 
He delivered one of his short roars of laughter and slapped his leg. 

By Jupiter! thought I, Lady Monson will hear that and take it 
as an expression of his delight at her presence on board I Does she 
know, I wondered, that her colonel lies dead? but I had found no 
opportunity of inquiring. 

“ Come along, Laura,” continued Wilfrid ; “ I’ll roll you up as 
pretty a cigarette as was ever smoked by a South American belle.” 

She shook her head, forcing a smile. 

“Perhaps Miss Jennings will join us later,” said I, distrustful of 
his temper, and passing my hand through his arm, I got him on 
deck. 

“ Laura is a sweet little woman,” said he, pausing just outside the 
hatch to hammer at a tinder-box. 

“ Ay, sweet, pretty, and good,” said 1. 

“You’re in love with her, I think, Charles.” 

“ My dear Wilf, let us talk of this beautiful night,” I exclaimed. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 295 

“ Why of a beautiful night in preference to a beautiful woman ?” 
cried he. 

But I was determined to end this, so I called to a figure standing 
to leeward of the main-boom, “ Is that you, Finn ?” 

“ No, it’s me,” answered Crimp’s surly note ; “ the capt’n’s a-laying 
down, but he’s guv .orders to be aroused at four bells.” 

“Why?” inquired Wilfrid. 

Crimp probably supposed the question put to me, for which I 
was thankful. “ He may mistrust the weather, perhaps,” I answered, 
softly, that old Jacob might not hear. “ Yet the sky has a wonder- 
fully settled look, too. Let’s go right aft, shall we, Wilf ? The 
down-draught here is emptying my pipe.” 

We strolled together to the grating abaft the wheel and seated 
ourselves. I cannot tell how much it affected me to find him so 
easily thrown off the line of his thoughts. It had been dark some 
time, for in those parallels night treads on the skirts of the glory 
which the departing sun trails down the western slope of the sea. 
There would be no moon sooner than ten o’clock or thereabouts, 
and it was now a little after eight — for my cousin’s strange humor 
had made a much longer sitting than usual of the dinner. There 
was a refreshing sound of rushing wind in the star-laden dusk, a 
noise as of the sweeping of countless pinions, with a smooth hissing 
penetrating from the cut-water that made one think of the shearing 
of a skater over ice. The cabin lamps glowing into the skylight 
shed a yellow, satin-like sheen upon the foot of the main-sail, the 
cloths of which soared the paler for that lustre till the head of the 
gaff-topsail looked like the brow of some height of vapor dissolving 
against the stars. We sat on a line with the side of the deck on 
which he had shot Colonel Hope-Kennedy. The gloom worked the 
memory of the incident in me into a phantasm, and I remember a 
little shiver creeping over me to the vision of that tall, noble figure, 
with face upturned to heaven a moment or two, as though he 
watched the flight of his spirit, then falling dead with the counte- 
nance of a man in easy slumber. But Wilfrid had not a word to 
say about it. I could not reconcile his extraordinary silence with 
his attire and manner, which at all events indicated the recollection 
of the duel as strong in him. He chatted volubly and intelligently, 
without any of his customary breakings away from his train of 
thought; but not of his wife, nor of the colonel, nor of his infant, 
nor of this ocean chase that was now ended so far as the fugitives 
were concerned. He talked of his estate : how he intended to build 


296 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


M wing to his house that should contain a banqueting-rootn, how he 
proposed to convert some acres of his land into a market-garden, 
and so on and so on. His face showed pale in the starlight ; his 
evening costume gave him an unusual look to my eye; though he 
talked carelessly on twenty matters of small interest, I could yet 
detect an undue energy in the tone of his voice, comparatively sub- 
dued as it was, and in his vehement manner of smoking, puffing out 
great clouds rapidly and filling the bowl afresh with hasty fingers. 
It would have vastly eased my mind had he made some reference to 
the morning. You felt as if the memory of it must be working in 
him like some deadly swift pulse, and I confess I could have shrunk 
from him at moments when I thought of the character of the source 
whence he drew the strength that enabled him to mask himself 
with what might well have passed for a mere company face. 

When three bells, half-past nine, were struck, I made a move as 
though to go below. 

“ Going to turn in ?” he asked. 

“ It has been a long, tiring day,” said I, evasively. 

“ A grand day,” he exclaimed ; “ the one stirring, memorable day 
of our voyage. Come, I will follow you, and we will pledge it in a 
bumper before parting.” 

W'e entered the cabin ; it was deserted. Wilfrid asked where 
Miss Laura was, and the steward replied that he believed she was 
gone to bed. 

“ She should be with us, Charles,” cried my cousin, with a light 
of excitement in his eyes, his face flushed, though above it had 
looked marble in the starlight, and a half-smile of malicious triumph 
riding his lips. 

“ No, no,” said I. “ The poor child is tired. What is our drink 
to be,Wilf ? I want to see you turned in, my dear boy.” 

“ Pooh, pooh ; hang turning in ! I feel myself of forty-spirit 
power to-night, just in the humor, if I were a member, to go down 
to the House and terrify the old ladies in it who call themselves Sir 
Johns and Sir Thomases, and who wear swallow - tailed coats and 
broad-brimmed hats, with a passionate attack on the British Consti- 
tution.” 

He called for brandy and seltzer. However, we had not been sit- 
ting twenty minutes when his mood changed ; his dinner-party face 
darkened. He folded his arms and lay back in his chair, looking 
downward with a gathering scowl upon his brow. I rose. 

“ Good-night, Wilfrid,” said I. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


207 


He viewed me with an absent expression, said “ Good-nigiit,” and 
at once went, but in a mechanical way, governed by habit without 
giving his mind to the action, to his berth, at the door of which I 
saw him stand a moment while he gazed hard at the cabin abreast 
him ; then rubbing his brow with the gesture of one who seeks to 
clear his brain, he disappeared. 

Four bells were struck forward. I quietly stepped on deck, and 
while I stood looking into the binnacle Finn came up to me. 

“ Shall we tarn to now, sir,” said he, “ and get this here melan- 
choly job over?” 

“ Yes,” said I, “ the sooner the better. Sir Wilfrid has gone tov 
his cabin. Tell your people to be quick and secret.” 

He trudged forward, and presently returned with Cutbill and an- 
other seaman. The three of them went below, leaving Crimp to get 
the gangway rigged and lighted. A couple of globular lamps, such 
as might be used for riding-lights, were suspended against the bul- 
warks, and between them a seaman rested a grating of the length of 
a stretcher. The moon was rising at this moment on our starboard 
beam, an arch of blood defining the indigo-black line of the horizon 
there that on either hand of her went melting out into a blending 
of star-laden sky, with the dark and gleaming ocean brimming to 
the yacht, vast as the heavens themselves looked. Presently up 
through the hatch rose the figures of Captain Finn and the two 
men, sw'aying under the weight of the canvas-shrouded form they 
bore. The watch on deck came aft and gathered about the gang- 
way, where they glimmered like visionary creatures to the dull, yel- 
low shining of the lamps. Face after face seemed to come twisting 
and wriggling out of the dusk — visions of hairy salts, rendered life- 
like and actual by the dull illumination that glanced upon their 
shadowy lineaments. The wind filled the rigging with melancholy 
noises, there was a yearning sob in the sound of the water as it 
washed aft, broken and hissing serpent-like from the bow. The 
canvas rose dark, but it was now gathering to its loftier cloths a 
faint, delicate, pinkish tinge from the red moonbeam, though in a 
few minutes, when the planet had lifted her ill-shapen face clear of 
the black line of brine, all would be of a snow-white softness above 
us, and a sparkling line of bulwark-rail and glittering constellations 
in the skylight glass and a wake of floating and heaving silver roll- 
ing fan-shaped to us. 

A couple of seamen caught hold of the grating and raised it level 
with the bulwarks, one end supported by the rail. The body was 


298 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


placed upon it, and ghostly it looked in that spectral commingling of' 
starlight and lamplight and moonlight not yet brightening out of its 
redness — ghastly in the nakednesss of its canvas cover, though, to be 
sure, there was no need at that hour to conceal it under a flag. Finn 
pulled a thin volume from his pocket and opened it close against 
one of the lanterns, peering into it hard and coughing hoarsely, as 
though loath to begin. At last he mustered up courage and made 
a start. He pronounced many of the words oddly, and there was a 
deep sea note in his delivery. I watched his long face twitching 
and working to his recital as he brought his eyes in a squint to the 
page, with the lantern-light touching his skin into a hue of sulphur 
that made one think of it as the likeness of a human countenance 
wrought in yellow silk upon black satin. But the mystery of death 
was with us ; it seemed to breathe, hot as the night was, in an ice-cold 
air off the dark surface of the sea, and a man’s sense of humor must 
have been of the feather-weight quality of an idiot’s to flutter in the 
presence of the pallid, motionless bundle upon the grating, whose 
chill, secret subduing inspirations were unspeakably heightened by 
the eyes of the sailors round about gleaming out of the weak glim- 
mer of their countenances vaguely shaped by the rays of the oil- 
flames upon the obscurity, by the silver gaze of the countless equi- 
noctial heaven surveying us over the yard-arms and through the 
squares of the ratlines and amid the exquisite tracery of the gear,, 
and by the steadfast watching of stars low down in the measureless 
dark distances of the west and north and south, as though they were 
the eyes of giant spirits standing on tiptoe behind the horizon to 
observe us, and by the slow soaring of the moon that was now icing 
her crimson visage with crystal and diffusing a soft cloud of white 
light over the eastern sky with an edging already of brilliant glory 
under her upon a short length of the dark sea-line there that made 
the water in that direction look as though its boundary were beating 
in ivory foam against the wall of sky. 

I was standing with my back to the companion-hatch ; my eyes 
were rooted upon the white form which in a few moments now 
would be tilted and sent flashing with a heavy cannon-ball at its feet 
into the black depths on which we were floating. The man in life 
had acted a scoundrel’s part, and had richly merited the end he had 
met ; but he lay dead ; his grave was this mighty wilderness of wa- 
ters; not a hole in the earth to which those who mourned him could 
repair and say, pointing downward, “ What remains of him is here,” 
but a tomb rivalling the heavens in immensity, a material eternity 


AK OCEAN TKAUEDY. 


299 


that would absorb him and his memory as though his form, waiting 
there to be launched, was but a drop of the dew that glittered in the 
moonshine upon the grating that supported him. 

That bundle was a text to fill me with melancholy musings, and I 
was thinking of the man as I had beheld him in the morning, worn, 
indeed, by shipwreck and privation, but stately, erect, soldierly ; his 
cheek crimsoning to the blow that Wilfrid had dealt him ; life and 
passion strong in him, when I was startled out of my thoughts by 
Finn ceasing to read. I glanced at him and observed that he was 
peering over the top of his book, goggling some object with eyes 
that protruded from their sockets. I looked to see what had called 
off his attention, and remarked a tall female figure attired in a light 
dress, but with her face concealed by a long dark veil, standing close 
beside the head of the grating perfectly motionless save for such 
movements as came to her by the swaying of the yacht. She had 
appeared among us with the stealthiness of a ghost, and she looked 
like one in that conflicting light, with the faint gleam of her eyes 
showing through the veil, and the stitched-up form on the grating 
to give a darker and more thrilling accentuation to her presence 
than she could have got from an empty grave or a ruptured coffin. 
The sailors backed away from her, shouldering one another into the 
gloom with much wiping of their leather lips upon the backs of 
their hands. I was startled on beholding her, but quickly rallied to 
a sense of deep disgust that possessed me on contrasting this illus- 
tration of emotion with her language and treatment of Wilfrid that 
morning. 

“ Proceed,” I exclaimed to Finn. “ Read on, man, and shorten 
the service too if you can.” 

He croaked out afresh, but the poor fellow was exceedingly nerv- 
ous. The ceremony, so far as it had gone, had been chill, doleful, 
depressing enough before ; but a character almost of horror to my 
mind now came into it with the tall, stately, motionless apparition 
that stood — scarce w^on by the lamplight and the moonlight from 
the shadowiness that clothed her with unreality — at the head of that 
ashen-tinctured length lying prone and resembling a hammock upon 
the grating. It was the moral her ladyship’s presence put into the 
occasion that made the ceremony all on a sudden so hideously gaunt, 
so wild, so inhuman, striking, ice-like, to the heart. For this she 
had quitted her child, as she believed, forever; for this she had 
abandoned her husband, had pricked the bubble of her honor, ex- 
tinguished the inspiration of her womanhood’s purest, truest, deep- 


soo 


an ocean TllAGEDY. 


est, holiest feelings ! What but an affrighting vision could that dead 
man wrapped in his sea-shroud convert her ladyship’s dream of pas- 
sion and pleasure into ? Something, one should think, to blind the 
very eyes of her soul. But, Lord, how I hated her then for the base 
dishonor she did herself by this subtle, sneaking attendance at the 
funeral of her shame with the ghost of it to slip with her to her 
cabin again, and to act, maybe, as a sentinel to her for the rest of 
her natural life, stalking elose at her heels, so steadfast there as to 
make her presently dread to look behind her ! 

Finn’s croaking delivery ceased. 

“ Overboard with it !” he rumbled, for his gesture to tilt the grat- 
ing had been unobserved by the two men who held it, or else not un- 
derstood. 

The sailors raised their arms; the glimmering bundle sped like 
a small cloud of smoke from the side to the accompaniment of the 
noise of a long, creaming wash of water simmering aft from the bow, 
through which I caught the note of a half-stifled shriek from Lady 
Monson. She flung her hands to her face and reeled, as if she would 
fall. I sprang to her assistance, but on freeing her eyes and seeing 
who I was, she waved me from her with a motion of which the 
passionate haughtiness, disdain, and dislike were too strong for me 
to miss, confusing as the lights were. She then walked slowly aft. 

I believed she was going below again, and said to Finn : “ Shut 
the book. Make an end now. The man is buried, and thank God 
for it!” 

Lady Monson, however, walked to the extreme end of the vessel, 
kneeled upon the little grating abaft the wheel, and overhung the 
taffrail, apparently gazing into the obscurity astern where the colo- 
nel’s body was sinking, and where the white wake of the yacht was 
glittering, like a dusty summer highway, running ivory-like through 
a dark land on a moonlit night. I watched her with anxiety, but 
without daring to approach her. The sailors unhitched the lanterns, 
and took them forward along with the grating. 

I said to Finn, “ I hope she does not mean to throw herself over- 
board.” 

His head wagged in the moonlight. “ Sir,” he answered, “ the 
likes of her nature ain’t quick to kill themselves. If she were the 
wife of the gent that’s gone. I’d see to it. But she'll not hurt 
herself.” 

Nevertheless, I kept my eye upon her. The awning was off the 
deck ; the planks ran white as the foam alongside under the moon, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


301 


that was now brilliant, and all objects showed sharp upon that 
ground, while the flitting of the ebony shadows to the heave of the 
deck was like a crawling of spectral life. I spied the fellow at the 
glistening wheel turn his head repeatedly towards the woman abaft 
him, as though troubled by that wrapped, veiled, kneeling presence. 
Finn’s rough, off-hand indifference could not reassure me. The fear 
of death, all horror induced by the cold, moonlit, desolate, weltering 
waters upon which her eyes were fixed, might languish in the heat 
of some sudden craze of remorse, of grief, of despair. There were 
shapes of eddying froth striking out upon the dark liquid movement 
at which she was gazing — dim, scarce definable configurations of the 
sea-glow, which to her sight might take the form of the man whose 
remains had just sped from the yacht’s side ; and God knows what 
sudden beckoning, what swift, endearing, caressing gesture to her 
to follow him, she might witness in the apparition — real, sweet, 
alluring as in life to the gaze of her tragic eyes — which in imagina- 
tion I could see glowing against the moon. It was with a deep 
sigh of relief that, after I had stood watching her at least ten 
minutes in the shadow of the gangway, I observed her dismount 
from the grating and walk to the companion, down which she seem- 
ed to melt away as ghostly in her coming as in her going. Twenty 
.minutes later I followed her, found the cabin empty, and went 
straight to bed. 


302 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

Wilfrid’s delusion. 

It was pleasant to learn next rooming that the breeze which had 
been slipping us nimbly through it since we had trimmed sail for 
our homeward-bound run had not only blown steadily all night, giv- 
ing us an average of some seven knots an hour, but had gathered a 
little increase of weight at sunrise, so that I awoke to as much life 
in the vessel in the resonant humming from aloft, the quick wash 
and eager seething of recoiling seas, the straining noises of strong 
fastenings to the sloping of the spars, as though the north-east trades 
were pouring full upon the starboard bow, and we were buzzing 
through the cool Atlantic parallels within a distance of soundings that 
would render talk about Southampton and arriving home reasonable. 

For my part, ever since we had penetrated these “ doldrums,” as 
they are called, I was dreading the long dead calms of the frizzling 
belt where a cat’s-paw is hailed in God’s name, and where the roasting 
eye of the sun sucks out the very blue of the atmosphere till the 
heavens go down in a brassy dazzle to the ocean confines as though 
one were shut up in a huge burnished bell with a white-hot clapper 
for light. My spirits were good as I sprang out of my bunk and 
made for the bath-room. It was not only that the fresh wind 
whistling hot through the open scuttle of my berth caused me to 
think of home as lying at last fairly over the bow instead of over 
the stern, as it had been for weeks ; the object of this trip, such as 
it was, had been achieved ; there was nothing more to keep a look- 
out for: nothing more to hold one’s expectations tautened to crack- 
ing-point. Everything that was material had happened on the pre- 
ceding morning, and the toss of the colonel’s body last night over 
the gangway by lantern-light, with Lady Monson looking on, was like 
the drop of the black curtain : it was the end of the tragedy ; the 
orchestra had filed out, the lights were extinguished, and we could 
now pass into heaven’s invigorating air, and live again the old easy 
life of commonplaces. 

So ran my thoughts as I emerged from my berth with a very good 
appetite and made my way to the sparkling breakfast-table, I seated 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


303 


myself on a couch waiting for Wilfrid and Miss Laura ; the stewards 
hung about ready to serve the meal. I called the head one to me 
and said, “ Is there any chance of Lady Monson’s joining us at table, 
do you know ?” 

“ I think not, sir,” he answered. 

“Who attends to her — I mean as regards her meals?” 

“ Miss Jennings’s maid, sir. She told me this morning her lady- 
ship’s orders are that a separate tray should be prepared for her for 
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Her breakfast was taken to her about 
ten minutes ago.” 

“So I may presume,” said I, “that she finds herself pretty well 
this morning? And my cousin, steward ?” 

“I was to tell you, sir,” he answered, “that Sir Wilfrid will not 
come to table.” 

“ How is he ?” 

“ He didn’t complain, sir ; just said, ‘ I’ll breakfast in my cabin 
this morning.’ ” 

“ All right,” said I, and the man retired. 

There was nothing unusual in Wilfrid’s breakfasting in his cabin. 
I was glad to hear that he did not complain ; as a rule he was very 
candid if in suffering ; owned freely to whatever troubled him, how- 
ever trifling, and made much of it. 

In a few minutes Miss Laura came from her berth. Her face 
liad the delicacy of look that in her at all events I took to express a 
troubled or sleepless night. Her eyelids were a little heavy ; her 
lips wanted their dewy freshness of hue. Yet no woman, I thought, 
could ever show sweeter than she as she advanced and took my hand, 
smiling up at me, and subtly incensing the atmosphere with a flower- 
like fragrance that had nothing whatever to do with the scent-bottle. 
I told her that Wilfrid would not breakfast with us, and we seated 
ourselves. 

“ He is well, I hope?” 

“ Oh, I should think so, if I may judge from what the steward 
tells me. I’ll look in upon him after breakfast. Have you seen Lady 
Monson this morning?” 

“ No,” she answered, “ I sent my maid with a message, and the 
reply was that Lady Monson wishes to be alone.” 

“ Now, Miss Jennings,” said I, gently, but with some emphasis, 
“you must let nothing that Lady Monson does vex you. You have 
done your duty ; she is on board this yacht : I shall grow fretful if 
I think you intend to waste a single breath of the sweetness of your 


304 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


heart upon the arid air of Madam Henrietta’s desert nature. I dare 
say you have scarcely closed your eyes all night thinking about 
her.” 

“About her and other things.” 

“Why tease yourself? A sister is a sister only so long as she 
chooses to act and feel as one. It is indeed a tender word — a sweet 
relationship. But if a woman coolly cuts all family ties — ” 

She shook her head, smiling. “Your views are too hard, Mr. 
Monson. You would argue of a sister as you would of a wife. We 
must bear with the shame, the degradation, the wickedness of those 
we have loved, of those we still love spite of bitter repulse. There 
is no one, I am sure, would dare kneel down in prayer if it was be- 
lieved that God’s mercy depended upon our own actions. All of us 
would feel cut off.” 

Not all, I thought, looking at her; but I sat silent a while, feel- 
ing rebuked. I was a young man then ; I can turn back now, scarred 
as I am by many years of life’s warfare, and see that I was hard, 
too hard, in those thoughtless days of mine; that knowing little or 
nothing of suffering myself, I knew little or nothing of the deep and 
wondrous vitality of human sympathy. You find many corridors in 
human nature when you enter, but sympathy is the only way in ; 
and to miss that door is merely to go on walking round the edifice. 

I ate for a little in silence, and then said, “ I suppose, as you have 
seen almost nothing of your sister, you are unable to form an opin- 
ion of her state of mind ?” 

“She is naturally of a cold nature,” she answered; “dispositions 
such as hers, I think, do not greatly vary, let what will happen to 
them. Though one knows not what passion, feeling, emotion may 
have its fangs buried in such hearts, yet suffering has to pass through 
too many wraps to find expression.” 

I smiled. “ Yes,” said I, “ I know what you mean. She is like 
a person who lies buried in half a dozen coflSns ; a shell, then lead, 
then oak, and so on. Nothing but the last trumpet could influence 
the ashes inside.” 

“ But why did you ask that question, Mr. Monson ?” 

“ Well,” said I, “ you know that we buried the colonel last night?” 

She started. “ I did not know !” she exclaimed. 

“ Yes,” I continued. “ We slung a couple of lanterns, and Finn 
read the service. Just before the body was launched your sister ar- 
rived, rising like a ghost among us.” 

She looked greatly shocked, “Was Henrietta really present?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


305 

she exclaimed. “ How could she have known — what could the men 
have thought of her ? What madness of bad taste !” 

“ The forefinger follows the thumb,” said I, “ and when you come 
to the little finger you must begin again. All’s one with some 
people when they make a start. Am I too hard on human nature 
in saying this ?” 

But she merely exclaimed, as though talking to herself, “ How 
could she be present? How could she be present?” 

“ Well, now, mark what follows. Miss Jennings,” said I ; “ when 
the body had vanished, your sister walked right aft, kneeled upon 
the grating, and in that posture of supplication continued to watch 
the dark waters for upwards of ten minutes. Meanwhile I was gaz- 
ing at her from the gangway, where I stood in the dusk fidgeting 
exceedingly. For what was in my mind ? Suppose she should fling 
herself overboard !” 

Her violet eyes rested thoughtfully upon my face. “I should 
not have been afraid,” she exclaimed, with a faint touch of scorn 
which made wonderfully sapid her voice that was low and colorless. 

“ Of course you know your own sister,” said I. “ Finn took your 
view. I mentioned my misgiving, and his long head waggled most 
prosaically in the moonlight.” 

“ Women who behave as my sister has, Mr. Monson,” she ex> 
claimed, with the gravity of a young philosopher, “ are too selfish, 
too cowardly, too much in love with themselves and with life to act 
as you seem to fear my sister might. They may go mad, and then, 
to be sure, there is an end of all reasoning about them ; but while 
they have their senses they may be trusted so far as they themselves 
are concerned. In perfectly sane people many noble qualities go to 
impulses or resolutions which are deemed rash and impious by per- 
sons who falter over the mere telling of such deeds. My sister has 
not a single noble quality in her. She may poison the lives of oth- 
ers, but she will be extremely careful to preserve her own.” 

“ Now, if I had said that,” said 1. 

“ Oh,” she answered, with the little color that had come into her 
cheeks fading out of them, “ I will never reproach you for telling 
the truth.” 

After breakfast I went to Wilfrid’s cabin, and found him up an-d 
dressed, sitting in an easy-chair reading his diary, which I took the 
book to be. He held the volume close to his face ; his legs were 
crossed, his feet in slippers, his right hand grasped his big meer- 
schaum pipe, which was filled with yellow tobacco not yet lighted. 

20 


306 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


The cabin window was open, and the draperies of the handsome little 
apartment stirred to the pouring of the rich, hot, ocean breeze 
through the orifice. 

“You look vastly comfortable, Wilf,” said 1. “Glad to find you 
well. But it must be a bit dull here, though ?” 

“Not at all,” said he, putting down the book and lighting his 
pipe. “ Sit and smoke with me.” 

“ Why not on deck ?” I answered, sitting, nevertheless. “ A wide 
view in hot weather takes the place of a cool atmosphere. The sight 
is sensible of the heat as well as other organs. It may be cooler 
down here in reality than it is under the awning above, but these 
cribbed and coffined bulkheads make it very hot to the eye spite of 
that pleasant gushing of wind there.” 

He quietly sucked at his pipe, looking at me through the wreaths 
of tobacco-smoke which went up from his bowl. I lighted a cigar, 
furtively observing his face as I did so. He was pale : there was 
nothing novel in that, but I noticed an expression of anxiety in his 
eyes that was new to me ; a look of sane concern, as though some 
difficulty novel and surprising, yet not of a character to strike deep, 
had befallen him. I glanced at the breakfast-tray that was upon the 
table near which he was seated, and easily guessed by what remained 
that he had made a good meal. His manner was quiet, even sub- 
dued ; no symptoms of the old jerkiness, of the odd probing gest- 
ures of head with a thrust of his mind, as it were, into one’s face as 
if his intellect were as short-sighted as his eyes. He was airily clothed 
in white, a colored shirt wide open at the collar, and a small silk cap 
of a jockey pattern was perched upon his head. 

“ Has Finn removed the five-guinea piece from the main-mast ?” 
said he. 

“I don’t know, Wilf.” 

“I must send word to him to take charge of it, and to tell the 
men that the money will be distributed among them on our arrival. 
I shall be glad to get home.” 

“ And so shall I, upon my word.” 

“The ceaseless motion of the sea,” he continued, talking quietly 
and with a more sensible look in his face than I had witnessed in him 
since the hour of our start, “grows so distractingly monotonous after 
a time that I can readily believe it affects weak heads. This trip 
has about exhausted my love of seafaring. I shall sell the Bride^'' 

I nodded. 

“ How long should the run home occupy us?” he asked. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


307 


“Let us call it a month, or five weeks at the outside for every- 
body’s sake,” I answered. 

He smoked for a minute in silence with a thoughtful face and 
then said, “ Five weeks in one’s cabin is a long imprisonment.” 

I imagined he referred to his wife, and that he was feeling his 
way in this roundabout fashion to talk about her. “There is no 
necessity to be imprisoned for five weeks,” said 1. “Your yacht is 
not an ocean liner full of passengers whose stares and whispers might 
indeed prove embarrassing. So far as I am concerned, I am quite 
willing to promise very honestly never even to look. Miss Jennings 
is all tenderness and sweetness and sympathy ; there could be noth- 
ing to found a plea for seclusion upon in her presence. As to the 
sailors,” I continued, noticing without comprehending an air of be- 
wilderment that was growing upon his face as I talked, “ Jack meets 
with so many astonishments in his vocation that surprise and curios- 
ity are almost lost arts with him. The crew will take one long 
thirsty stare ; then turn their quids and give what passes aft no 
further heed whatever.” 

“ I don’t follow you,” he exclaimed, poising his pipe, with his eyes 
intently fixed on me ; “ what are you talking about ?” 

“You were speaking of the tediousness of a five weeks’ imprison- 
ment.” 

“ Quite right,” said he, “ and tedious it is if it’s to last five 
weeks.” 

“ But, my dear Wilfrid, I was endeavoring to point out that the 
imprisonment to which you refer is unnecessary ; in fact, after last 
night — ” But here I suddenly bit my lip to the perception that it 
would be rash and unwise on my part to let him know that his wife 
had been present at Colonel Hope-Kennedy’s burial. “ What I mean 
is,” I continued, talking rapidly, “ if it’s a mere question of sensitive- 
ness or pride recoiling from observation, why not imitate the great 
Mokanna : 

“ ‘ O’er his features hung 
The Veil, the Silver Veil which he had flung 
In mercy there to hide from human sight 
His dazzling brow till men could bear its light.’ 

In our case we have no dazzling brow, and consequently require no 
silver veils ; but in Miss Laura’s wardrobe there should be — ” 

He was now gaping at me, and cried out: “Your brain wanders 
this morning, Charles. Do you mean that/ should go veiled?” 

“ You !” I exclaimed ; “ certainly not. I am not talking of you,” 


308 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“But I am talking of myself, though,” he cried. 

I looked at him with amazement. “ You do not mean to say that 
you intend to imprison yourself in this cabin'till we get home?” 

He shook his head. “ I don’t imprison myself,” he answered, “ I 
am imprisoned.” 

“ By whom, pray ?” 

“ Can’t you see ?” 

I ran my eyes round the cabin. 

“ No, no !” he shouted, “ look at me. Don’t you perceive that I 
can’t get out ? How am I to pass through that door ?” 

“How are you to pass through that door?” I exclaimed; “why, 
by walking through it, of course. How else?” 

“ Ay, and that’s just what I can’t do,” said he, with a melancholy 
shake of the head. 

“ But why not, Wilfrid ?” I cried, scarcely yet understanding how 
it was with him. 

“ Because,” he answered, petulantly, looking down himself, then 
at his arms and legs, “ I am too big.” 

I perceived now what had come to him, and felt so dismayed, so 
grieved, so pained, I may say, to the very heart, that for some mo- 
ments I was unable to speak. However, with a violent effort I pulled 
myself together, and lighting my cigar afresh in a demonstrative 
way, for the mere sake of obtaining what concealment I could get 
out of my gestures and my puffing of the tobacco-clouds, I said : 
“ Big yon always were, Wilfrid ; but never so big, and not now so 
big, as not to be able to pass through that door. See ! let me go 
first ; put your two hands just above my hips, and you’ll follow me 
through as easily as reeving a rope’s end through the sheave-hole it 
belongs to.” 

I rose, but he waved me off with an almost frantic gesture. “ My 
God, man!” he shouted, “what is the use of talking? I could no 
more get through that door than I could pass through that port 
hole.”* 

“But don’t you think we might manage to haul you through?” 
said I. 

“ You’d tear me to pieces,” he answered. “ Sit down, my dear 
fellow,” he continued, speaking with an almost cheerful note in his 
voice ; “ it is a very grave inconvenience, but it must be met. This 
cabin is commodious, and with you and Laura to come and keep me 
company, and with the further solace of my pipe and books, why, I 
shall be very nearly as well off as if I could get on deck. Besides,” 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


309 


he added, lifting his finger and addressing me with that old air of 
cunning I have again and again referred to, made boyish and pa- 
thetic by the quivering of his eyelids and the knowing look his 
mouth put on, “ even if I was not too much swelled to pass through 
that door” — he glanced at it as if it were a living thing that de- 
manded respectful speech from him — “ I should never be able to get 
through the companion-hatch.” 

“ Well,” said I, “ it no doubt is as you say. A little patience, and 
you will find yourself equal, I am sure, to leaving your cabin. If 
not, and you fear the idea of a squeeze, there is always your carpen- 
ter at hand. A few blows dealt at yonder bulkhead would make 
room for an elephant.” 

“Ay, that would be all very well,” said he, “so far as this 'cabin 
is concerned ; but would you have me order the carpenter to rip up 
the deck, with leagues of Atlantic weather right ahead of us ?” 

I feigned to agree. No useful result could possibly follow any 
sort of reasoning with him while this extraordinary fancy possessed 
his brain. I watched him attentively, to remark if he moved or 
acted as if his hallucination involved physical conditions — as if, in 
short, he was sensible of the weight and unwieldiness of excessive 
growth in his body and limbs ; for I remembered the case of a man 
I once heard of who, believing himself to have grown enormously 
corpulent in a single night, acted the part of an immensely fat man 
by breathing pursily and with labor, by grasping his stomach as 
though it stood out a considerable distance ahead of him, and by 
other samples of behavior which in his madness he might imagine 
properly belonged to the obese. But I could detect no conduct of 
this sort in Wilfrid outside that inspection of himself which I men- 
tioned when he first told me that he had grown too big to quit his 
cabin. 

I changed the subject, and sat talking with him for a long half- 
hour. He asked no questions about his wife, nor as to the disposal 
of the colonel’s body, nor reverted to the extent of the faintest im- 
plication to the incidents of the preceding day. Yet he conversed 
with perfect rationality ; his manners were bland, with something of 
dignity in them ; it seemed, indeed, as if the poor fellow’s craziness 
had localized itself in this new and astounding fancy of his being 
unable to squeeze his way through on deck, leaving his mind in all 
other directions clear and serene ; yet, mad as was the notion that 
had now seized him, I could not but secretly feel that there was 
more madness yet in his insensibility to what had happened, as 


310 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


though, indeed, the light of memory in him had been extinguished, 
and he was conscious of nothing but what w'as actually passing be- 
fore his eyes. 

I held my peace on this new and astonishing craze, fancying that 
at any hour I might find him on deck and his delusion gone. At 
dinner, however, that day Miss Laura noticed his absence. My si- 
lence, I suppose, convinced her that there was something wrong with 
him. She questioned me, and I told her the truth. Her eyes filled 
with sadness. 

“ He grows worse,” she said. “ I fear he will never recover.” 

“This marriage,” I answered, “on top of what was congenital 
in him, has proved too much. Have you seen your sister to-day ?” 

“ No.” 

“Does she intend to keep her cabin until we reach England?” 

“ I cannot say. She declines to see me.” 

“ Yet she has turned you out of your berth, and does not scruple, 

I suppose, to use everything that you possess. Well, we are a queer 
little ship, I must say ; the husband self-imprisoned by fancy on one 
side, and a wife self-imprisoned by Heaven knows what emotions on 
the other side; and both doors within kick of a foot from either 
threshold. It is a picture to encourage an ingenuous mind fired 
with matrimonial resolutions !” 

“ Men are fools to get married !” she exclaimed, piquantly. 

“ And women ?” said I. 

“ Oh, it is the business of women to make men fools,” she an- 
swered. 

Her clear eye rested serenely on mine, and she spoke without 
archness or sarcasm. 

“ I don’t think,” said I, “ that women make fools of men, but that 
it is men who make fools of themselves. Yet this I vow before all 
the gods : if I had married a woman like your sister, and she had 
served me as she has served her husband, I should wish to be mad 
as Wilfrid is. He does not ask after her, seems to have utterly 
forgotten her and the fellow who was sent to his rest yesterday. 
Oh, how delightful ! Why, you hear of women like Lady Monson 
driving their spouses into hideous courses of life, forcing them to 
search for oblivion in drink, gambling, and so on until they end as 
penniless miscreants, as broken-down purple-nosed rogues, and all 
for love, forsooth ! But how is Wilfrid served ? Some wild-eyed 
imagination slips into his brain, turns all the paintings to the wall, 
and with nimble hands falls to work to garnish the galleries inside 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


311 


his skull with tapestry hangings which engage his mind to the for- 
getting of all things else.” 

“ But, Mr. Monson,” cried she, “ surely with some little trouble 
one might succeed in persuading him, while feigning to admit he 
has increased in size, that he is not too big to pass through his 
door.” 

“ Let us pay him a visit,” said I. 

She at once rose. We had finished dinner some time. I had 
been chatting with her over such slender dessert as a yacht’s stores 
in those days supplied — figs, nuts, raisins, biscuits, and the like. 
The westering sun colored the cabin with a ruby atmosphere, amid 
which the wines on the table glowed in rich contrast with the snow- 
white damask and the icy sparkle of crystal, while red stars trem- 
bled in the silver lamps, with a soft crimson lustre flaking, as it 
seemed, upon the eye out of the mirrors. The humming wind 
gushed pleasantly through the open skylight and down the hatch- 
way, and set the leaves of the plants dancing, and the ferns grace- 
fully nodding. To think of the woman for whom all this show was 
designed, for whom all these elegancies were heaped together, the 
mistress indeed of the gallant and beautiful little fabric that was 
bearing us with a pretty sauciness over this sea of sapphire and un- 
der this reddening equinoctial heaven, sulking in her cabin, a dis- 
graced, a degraded, a socially ruined creature, imprisoned by her 
own hand, and pride acting the part of turnkey to her ! But Miss 
Jennings was making her way to Wilfrid’s cabin, and there was no 
leisure now for moralizing. 

We entered. The remains of the dinner my cousin had been 
served with were still upon his table, and I gathered that he had 
done exceedingly well. This did not look as though he suspected 
that eating had anything to do with his sudden astonishing growth. 
He had emptied one pint bottle of champagne, and another about 
a quarter full stood at his elbow, with a bumper just poured out, ap- 
parently, alongside it. He had attired himself in dress-clothes again, 
and sat with an air of state and dignity in his arm-chair, toying with 
a large cigar not yet lighted. 

“How d’ye do, Laura, my dear? Sit down. Sit, Charles. There 
is plenty of room for slender people like you.” 

I placed a chair for Miss Jennings, and vaulted into Wilfrid’s 
bunk, for though the cabin was roomy in proportion to the burden 
of the yacht, the accommodation was by no means ample, owing to 
the furniture that crowded the deck. His high cheek-bones were 


312 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


flushed, a sort of glassiness coated his eyes, but this I readily as- 
cribed to the champagne; the interior was hot, and Miss Laura 
cooled her sweet face with a black fan that hung at her waist. My 
cousin watched her uneasily, as if he feared she would see something 
in him to divert her. 

“Do you feel now, Wilfrid,” said I, “as if you could get on 
deck ?” 

“ Oh, certainly not,” he answered, warmly ; “I wonder that you 
should ask such a question. Compare my figure with that door.” 

He looked at Miss Laura with a shrug of his shoulders, as though 
he pitied me. 

“ Surely, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed, “ you could pass through quite 
easily, and without hurting yourself at all.” 

“Quite easily! Yes, in pieces!” he cried, scornfully. “But it is 
not that you are both blind. Your wish is to humor me. Please 
do nothing of the sort. What I can see you can see. Look at this 
bulk.” He put down his cigar to grasp his breast with both hands. 
“ Look at these,” he continued, slapping first an arm, then a leg. 
“ It is a most fortunate thing that I should have broadened only. 
Had I increased correspondingly in height I should not have been 
able to stand upright in this cabin and he directed a glance at the 
upper deck, or ceiling, while a shiver ran through him. 

I thought now I would sound his mind in fresh directions, for 
though while his present craze hung strong in him it was not likely 
he would quit his cabin, yet if his intellect had failed in other 
ways to the extent I found in this particular hallucination, he would 
certainly have to be watched, not for his own security only, but for 
that of all others on board. Why, as you may suppose, his craziness 
took the wildest and most tragic accentuation when one thought of 
where one was — in the very heart of the vast Atlantic, a goodly com- 
pany of us on board, a little ship that was as easily to be made a 
bonfire of as an empty tar-barrel, with gunpowder enough stowed 
somewhere away down forward to complete in a jiffy the work that 
the flames might be dallying with. 

“ You do not inquire after Lady Monson, Wilfrid?” said I. 

Miss Jennings started and stared at me. 

“ W^’hy should I ?” he answered, coldly, and deliberately produ- 
cing his little tinder-box, at which he began to chip. “ I’ll venture 
to say she doesn’t inquire after me'' 

I was astonished by the rationality of this answer and the air of 
mtelligence that accompanied its delivery. 


AN OCJlAN tragedy. 


313 


“ No, I fear not,” said I, much embarrassed. “As she only came 
on board yesterday — ” 

“Well?” he exclaimed, finding that I paused. 

“Oh,” said I, with a bit of a stammer, “it just occurred to me 
you might have forgotten that she was now one of us, journeying 
home.” 

“ Tut, tut !” said he, waving his hand at me, but without turning 
liis head. “ Laura, you are looking after her, my dear ?” 

“ My maid sees that she has all she requires,” answered the girl. 
“ She declines to have anything to say to me — to meet me — to hear 
of me.” 

He nodded his head slowly and gravely at her, and lowering his 
voice, said, “ Can she hear us, do you think ?” 

“ No,” I exclaimed, “ not through the two bulkheads, with the 
width of passage between.” 

He smoked leisurely while he kept his eyes thoughtfully bent on 
Miss Laura. “ My cousin,” said he, addressing her as though I were 
absent, “ has on more than one occasion said to me, ‘ Suppose you 
recover your wife, what are you going to do with her?’ I have re- 
covered her, and now I will tell you my intentions. Laura, you 
know I adored her.” She inclined her head. “ What term would 
you apply to a woman,” he proceeded, “ who should abandon a de- 
voted husband that worshipped the ground she walked upon ; who 
should desert the sweetest little infant” — I thought his voice would 
falter here, but it was as steady as the fixed regard of his eyes — 
“that ever came from Heaven to fill a mother’s heart with love; 
who should forfeit a position of distinction and opulence ; who 
should stealthily creep like a thief in the night from a home of 
beauty, of elegance, and of splendor ; who should do all this for an 
end of such depravity that it must be nameless ?” his forefinger shot 
up with a jerk, and his eyes glowed under the trembling of the lids. 
“ What is the term you would apply to such a woman ?” he contin- 
ued, now scowling, and with an imperious note in his voice. 

I guessed the word that was in his mind, and cried,. “Why, mad 
of course.” 

“ Mad !” he thundered, violently, slapping his knee, and breaking 
into a short, semi-delirious laugh. He leaned forward as though he 
would take Miss Laura into his strictest confidence, and putting 
his hand to the side of his mouth, he whispered : “ She is mad. We 
none of us knew it, Laura. My first act, then, when we reach home 
will be to confine her. But not a word, mind !” He held his finger 


AK OCEAN fRAOEDY. 


su 

to his lips, and in that posture slowly leaned back in his chan* 
again with a face painful with its smile of cunning and triumph. 

I saw that the girl was getting scared ; so without ado I dropped 
out of the bunk onto my feet. 

“An excellent scheme, Wilfrid,” said I; “in fact, the only thing 
to be done. But, my dear fellow, d’ye know the atmosphere here 
is just roasting? I’ll take Miss Jennings on deck for a turn, and 
when I am cooled down a bit I’ll look in upon you for another yarn 
for half an hour before turning in.” 

“ All right,” he exclaimed. “ Laura looks as if she wants some 
fresh air. Send one of the stewards to me, will you, as you pass 
through the cabin? But mind, both of you — hush ! Not a word — 
you understand?” 

“ Trust us,” said I ; and, sick at heart, I took Miss Laura’s hand 
and led her out of the cabin. As I closed the door she reeled, and 
would have fallen but for the arm I passed round her. I conducted 
her to a couch, and procured a glass of water. The atmosphere here 
was comparatively cool with the evening air breezing down through 
the wide skylight, and she quickly recovered. 

“ It is terrible !” she exclaimed, pressing her fingers to her eyes 
and shaking her head. “ I should fall crazy myself were I much 
with him. His sneers, his smiles, his looks, the boyish air of his 
face too ! The thought of his misery, his injury, the irreparable 
wrong done him — poor Wilf, poor Wilf !” Her tender heart gave 
w'ay, and she wept piteously. 

When she was somewhat composed she fetched a hat and accom- 
panied me on deck. The dusk down to the horizon was clear and 
fine, richly spangled to where the hard black line of the ocean 
ruled the firmament. On high sailed many meteors like flying-fish 
sparkling out of the dark velvet; some of them scoring under the 
trembling constellations a silver wake that lingered long on the eye, 
and resembled a length of moon-colored steam slowly settling away 
before the breath of a soft air. There were many shooting-stars, 
too, without the comet-like grace of the meteoric flights; sharp, 
bounding sparkles that made one think of the flashing of muskets 
levelled at the ocean by visionary hands in the hovering, star-laden 
gloom. The wind was failing; the yacht was sailing with erect 
masts with a rhythmic swinging of the hollows of her canvas to the 
light weather-rolls of the vessel on the tender undulations. It was 
like the regular breathing of each great white breast. The dew was 
heavy, and cooled the draught as a fountain the atmosphere round 


AK OCEAN TRAGEDV. 


315 


about it. A little sleepy noise of purring froth came from the 
bows. All was hushed along the decks, though as the yacht lifted 
forward I could make out some figures pacing the forecastle appar- 
ently with naked feet, for no footfall reached the ear. 

“ Alas !” said I, “ the wind is failing. I dread the stagnation of 
these waters. I have heard of ships lying becalmed here for two 
and three months at a stretch ; in all those hideous days of frying 
suns and steaming nights scarce traversing twenty leagues.” 

“ We were becalmed a fortnight on the Line,” said Miss Laura, 
“ on our passage to England. It seemed a year. Everybody grew 
quarrelsome, and I believe there was a mutiny among the crew.” 

“ Oh, I hate the dead calm at sea !” I cried. “Yet I fear we are 
booked. Look straight up. Miss Jennings; you will behold a very 
storm of shooting -stars. When I was in these waters, but much 
more west and east than where we now are, I took notice that when- 
ever the sky shed meteors in any abundance a calm followed, and 
the duration of the stagnant time was in proportion to the abun- 
dance of the silver discharge. But who is that standing aft by the 
wheel there ?” 

My question was heard and answered. “It’s me — Capt’n Finn, 
sir.” 

“ We’re in for a calm, I fear, Finn.” 

“ I fear so, sir,” he answered, slowly coming over to us. “ Great 
pity, though. I was calculating upon the little breeze to-day lasting to 
draw us out of this here belt. Them shooting-stars, too, ain’t whole- 
some. Some says they signifies wind, and so they may to the nor- 
rards, but not down here. Beg pardon, Mr. Monson, but how is Sir 
Wilfrid, sir? Ha’n’t seen him. on deck all day. I hope his honor’s 
pretty well ?” 

“ Come this way, Finn,” said 1. 

The three of us stepped to the weather-rail, somewhat forward, 
clear of the ears of the helmsman. 

“ Captain,” said I, “ my cousin’s very bad, and I desire to talk to 
you about him.” 

“ Sorry to hear it, sir,” he answered, in a voice of concern ; “ the 
heat’s a-trying him, maybe.” 

“ He refuses to leave his cabin,” said I, “ and why, think you ? 
Because he has got it into his head that he has grown too broad to 
pass through the door, or even to squeeze through that hatch there.” 

“ Gor bless me !” he exclaimed, “ what a notion to take on. And 
yet it ain’t the first time I’ve heard of such whims. I was once 


316 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


shipmate with a man who believed his nose to be a knife. I’ve seen 
him a-trying to cut up tobacco with it. There’s no arguing with 
people when they gets them tempers.” 

“But don’t you think, Captain Finn,” said Miss Jennings, “that, 
with some trouble. Sir Wilfrid might be coaxed into coming on 
deck? If he could be induced to pass through his door he would 
find the hatch easy. Then, when on deck, confidence would return 
to him and his crazy notion leave him.” 

“ Won’t he make the heffort, miss?” inquired Finn. 

I answered, “ No. He says that it would tear him to pieces to 
be dragged through.” 

“ Then, sir,” exclaimed the skipper, with energy, “ if he says it, you 
may depend upon it he believes it, sir ; and if he believes it, then I 
dorn’t doubt that physical force, by way of getting him out of his 
cabin, would be the most dangerous thing that could be tried. It’s 
all the narves, sir. Them’s an arrangement fit to bust a man open 
by acting upon his imagination. Mr. Monson, sir. I’ll tell ’ee what 
once happened to me. I had a fever, and when I recovered my narves 
was pretty nigh all gone. I’d cry one moment like a baby, then 
laugh ready to split my sides over nothin’ at all. I took on a notion 
that I might lay wiolent hands on myself if the opportunity offered. 
It wasn’t that I wanted to hurt myself, but that I was afeared I would. 
I recollect being in my little parlor one day. There was a bit of a 
sideboard agin the wall, with a drawer in which my missus kep’ the 
table-knives we ate with. The thought of them knives gave me a 
fright. I wanted to leave the room, but to get to the door I should 
have to pass the drawer where them knives were, and I couldn’t stir. 
Your honor, such was the state of my narves that the agony of being 
dragged past that door would have been as bad as wrenching me in 
halves. So I got out through the window, and it was a fortnight 
afore I had the courage to look into that parlor again.” 

“ My father knew a rich gentleman in Melbourne,” said Miss Jen- 
nings, “ who lost his mind. He believed that he had been changed 
into a cat, and all day long he would sit beside a little crevice in the 
wainscot of his dining-room waiting for a mouse to appear.” 

“ But when it comes to imaginations of this kind,” said I, “ one is 
never to know what is going to follow. Captain Finn, my cousin 
may mend — I pray God he will do so, and soon — ” 

“ Amen,” quoth Finn, in his deepest note. 

“ Meanwhile,” I continued, “ I am of opinion that he should be 
watched.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


317 


“You think so, sir?” he exclaimed. 

“ Why, man, consider where we are. Send your eye into that 
mighty distance,” I cried, pointing to the black junction of scintil- 
lant gloom and the spread of ocean coming to us thence in ink. 
“Think of our loneliness here and the condition that a madman’s 
act might reduce us to. That is not all. Lady Monson, this young 
lady, and her maid sleep close to his cabin. Who shall conjecture 
the resolution that may possess a diseased brain on a sudden ? Sir 
Wilfrid must be watched, Finn.” 

“I agree with you, sir,” he answered, thoughtfully, “but — but 
who’s to have the ordering of it ? ’Tain’t for the likes of me, sir — ” 
He paused ; then added, “ He’s master here, ’ee know, sir.” 

“ I’ll make myself responsible,” I exclaimed ; “ the trouble is to 
have him watched with the delicacy that shall defy the detection of 
his most suspicious humor should he put his head out of his berth 
or quit it — which he is not likely to do yet. Of course an eye would 
have to be kept upon him from without. Name me two or three of 
your trustiest seamen.” 

“ Why, sir, there’s Cutbill, a first-class man ; and there’s two oth- 
ers, Jonathan Furlong and William Grindling, that you may put 
your fullest confidence in.” 

“Then,” said I, “I propose that these men should take a spell of 
keeping a lookout turn and turn about. The stewards would have 
been fit persons, but they are wanting in muscle. Let the man who 
keeps watch in the cabin so post himself that he may command the 
passage where Sir Wilfrid’s berth is. You or Crimp, according as 
your watch comes round, will see that the fellow below, whoever he 
may be, keeps awake. Pray attend to this, Finn. I am satisfied 
that it is a necessary measure.” 

“ I shall have to tell old Jacob the truth, sir, and the men likewise,” 
said he, “ and also acquaint the stewards with what’s wrong, otherwise 
they’ll be for turning the sailor that’s sent below out of the cabin.” 

“By all means,” said I; “I’ll stand your lookout while you are 
making the necessary arrangements. But see that you provide your 
men with some ready and quite reasonable excuse for being in the 
cabin should Sir Wilfrid chance to come out during the night and 
find one of his seamen sitting at the table.” 

“ Ay, ay, sir ; that’s to be managed with a little thinking,” an- 
swered Finn, and forthwith he marched towards the forecastle into 
the darkness there. 

“ It is fortunate,” I said to Miss Jennings, “that I am Wilfrid’s 


318 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


cousin. If I were simply a guest on board, I question if Finn would 
do what I want.” 

We fell to pacing the deck. Even as we walked the light breeze 
weakened yet, till here and there you’d catch sight of the gleam of a 
star in some short fold of black swell running with a burnished brow. 
The dew to the fluttering of the canvas aloft fell to the deck with 
the pattering sound of rain-drops. 

“ Oh,” groaned I to Miss Laura, “ for a pair of paddle-wheels !” 

We stepped to the open skylight to observe if aught were stirring 
below, but gladly recoiled from the gush of hot air there rising with 
a flery breath stale with the smell of the dinner-table spite of the 
sweetness put into it by the flowers. Heavens, how my very heart 
sickened to the slopping sounds of water alongside lifting stagnantly 
and sulkily melting out into black ungleaming oil ! We seated our- 
selves under the fannirrg spread of main-sail, talking of Wilfrid, of 
his wife, of features of the voyage, until little by little I found my- 
self slowly sliding into a sentimental mood. My companion’s sweet 
face, glimmering tender and placid to the starlight, came very near 
courting me into a confession of love. The helmsman was hidden 
from us, we seemed to be floating alone upon the mighty shadow 
that stretched around. A sense of inexpressible remoteness was in- 
spired by the trembling of the luminaries, and the sharp shooting of 
the silver meteors, as though all the life of this vast hushed universe 
of gloom were up there, and we had come to a pause upon the very 
verge of creation, with no other vitality in the misty confines save 
what the beating of our two hearts put into them. 

On a sudden she started and said, “ See ! There is my sister.” 

The figure of Lady Monson rose, pale and veiled, out of the com- 
panion-hatch. She did not observe us, and approached the part of 
the deck where we were seated, courted haply by the deeper dye the 
shadow of the main-sail put into the atmosphere about it. I was 
struck by the majesty of her gait, by the tragic dignity of her car- 
riage as she advanced, taking the planks with a subtlety of movement 
that made her form look to glide wraith-like. The sweet heart at my 
side shrank with so clear a suggestion of alarm in her manner that I 
took her hand and held it. Lady Monson drew close — so close with- 
out seeing us that I believed she was walking in her sleep, but she 
caught sight of us then, and instantly flung, with an inexpressible 
demeanor of temper and aversion, to the other side of the deck, which 
she paced, going afterwards to the rail and overhanging it, motion- 
less as the quarter-boat that hung a little past her, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


319 


“She frightens me!” whispered Laura; “ought I to join her? 
Oh, cruel, cruel, that she should hate me so bitterly for her own acts 1” 

“ Why should you join her? She does not want you. The heat 
•has driven her on deck, and she wishes to muse and perhaps moral- 
ize over the colonel’s grave. Why are you afraid of her?” 

“Because I am a coward.” 

Just then Finn came along. He went up to Lady Monson and I 
saw his figure stagger against the starlight when he discovered his 
mistake. He peered about, and then came over to us, breathing 
hard and polishing his forehead. 

“ Nigh took the breath out of my body, sir,” he exclaimed, in a 
hoarse whisper ; “ actually thought it was your honor, so tall she be. 
Well, I’ve arranged everything, sir, and a lookout ’ll be established 
soon arter the cabin light’s turned down.” 

Laura suddenly rose and wished me good-night. I could see that 
Lady Monson’s presence rendered her too uneasy to remain on deck, 
so I did not press her to stay, though I remember heartily wishing 
that her ladyship was still on board the 'Liza Rohhins. She con- 
tinued to hold her stirless posture at the bulkwark-rail, as though 
she were steadily thinking herself into stone. But for her contempt- 
uous and insolent manner of turning from us I believe I should have 
found spirit enough to attempt a conversation with her. It was 
not until four bells that she rose suddenly from her inclined attitude, 
as though startled by the clear echoing chimes. Past her the sky 
was dimly reddening to the moon, whose disk still floated below the 
horizon, and against the delicate, almost dream-like flush I perceived 
her toss up her veil and press her hands to her face. She then 
veiled herself afresh, came to the companion, and disappeared. Was 
it remorse working in her, or grief for her foundered colonel, or 
some anguish born of the thought of her child ? Easier, I thought, 
to fathom with the sight the mysteries of the ooze of the black, va- 
porous-looking surface that our keel was scarce now wrinkling than 
to penetrate the secrets of a heart as dark as hers ! 

Half an hour later I quitted the deck, and as I passed through 
the cabin nodded to Cutbill, who sat awkwardly and with a highly 
embarrassed air, with his back upon the. cabin table, commanding the 
after-cabins — a huge salt, all whisker, wrinkles, and muscle. 


320 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

A DEAD CALM. 

I WAS up and about a great deal during the night. It was not 
only that the heat murdered sleep; there was something ominous 
in the profound stillness which fell upon our little ship that the mind 
found itself weighed down as with a sense of misgiving, a dull in- 
communicable dread of approaching calamity. Of the dead calm at 
sea I was by no means ignorant; in African and West Indian waters 
I had tasted of the delights of this species of stagnation over and 
over again. One calm, I remember, came very close to realizing 
Coleridge’s description, or rather the description that the poet bor- 
rowed from the narrative of old Sir Richard Hawkins preserved in 
the foxed and faded pages of the Rev. Samuel Purchas. The water 
looked to be full of wriggling fiery creatures burning in a multi- 
tude of colors till the surface of the sea resembled a vast, ghastly 
prism reflecting the lights of some hellish principality deep sunk in 
the dark brine./ But I never recollect the ocean until this night as 
without some faint heave of swell ; yet after the weak draught of 
air had utterly died out, somewhere about midnight, the yacht slept 
upon a bosom as stirless as the surface of a summer lake. There 
was not the lightest movement to awaken an echo in her frame, to 
run a tremor through her canvas, to nudge the rudder into the dim- 
mest clanking of its tiller-chains. The effect of such a hush as this 
at sea is indescribable. On shore, deep in the country, far distant 
from all hum of life, the stillness of night is a desired and familiar 
condition of darkness; it soothes to rest; whatever vexes it is a vio- 
lence ; the sweeping of a gale through hissing and roaring trees, the 
thunder of wind in the chimney, the lashing of the windows wdth 
hail and rain, the red bolt of lightning, to whose hue the bedroom 
glances in blood to the eye of its disturbed occupant — all this brings 
with it an element of fear, of something unusual, out of keeping, 
out of nature almost. But at sea it is the other way about. ’Tis 
the dead calm that is unnatural. It is as though the mighty forces 
of heaven and ocean had portentously sucked in their breath in 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


321 


anticipation of the shock of conflict, as a warrior fills his lungs to 
the full and then holds his wind while he waits the cry of charge. 

I tried to sleep but could not, and hearing one o’clock struck on 
the forecastle, dropped out of my bunk for ten minutes of fresh air 
on deck. Cutbill sat with his back against the table ; the small 
flame of the lamp that hung without the least vibration from the 
caWn ceiling gleamed in the sweat-drops that coated his face as 
though oil had been thrown upon him. I said softly, pausing a mo- 
ment to address him, “A wonderfully still night, Cutbill.” 

“ Never remember the like of it, sir,” he answered, in a whisper 
that had a note of strangling in it with his effort to subdue his 
naturally tempestuous utterance. 

“ All quiet aft ?” 

As a graveyard, sir.” 

“ In case Sir Wilfrid Monson should look out and see you, what 
excuse for being here has Captain Finn provided you with ?” 

_ “ I’m supposed to be watching the bayrometer, sir. If Sir Wilfrid 
steps out I’m to seem to be peering hard at that there mercury, then 
to go on deck as if I’d got something to report.” 

“ Oh, that’ll do, I dare say,” I exclaimed. “ He may wonder, but 
that must not signify. Heaven grant, Cutbill, that I am unnecessa- 
rily nervous; but we’re a middling full ship; it is the right sort of 
night, too, to make one feel the hugeness of the ocean and the help- 
lessness of sailors when deprived of their little machinery for fight- 
ing it; and what I say is a misgiving under such circumstances 
ought to serve ns as a conviction — so keep a bright lookout, Cutbill. 
Nothing is going to happen, I dare say ; but our business is to con- 
trive that nothing shall happen.” 

The huge fellow lifted his enormous hand very respectfully to his 
glistering forehead and I passed on to the deck. 

The moon shone brightly and her reflection lay upon the sea like 
a league-long fallen column of silver, with the ocean going black as 
liquid pitch to the sides of the resplendent shaft. Not a wrinkle 
tarnished that prostrate pillar of light: not the most fairy-like un- 
dulation of water put an instant’s warping, for the space of a foot, 
into it. I set the main-mast head by a star and w^atched it, and the 
trembling, greenish, lovely point of radiance hung poised as stead- 
fastly on a line with the truck as though it were some little crystal ' 
lamp fixed to an iron spike up there. 

I spied Jacob Crimp near the wheel, but I had come up to breathe 
^nd not to talk. I tO coa^^ a sleepy humor into me, mi 


322 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


guessed that that end would be defeated by a chat with the surly 
little sailor, with whom I rarely exchanged a few sentences without 
finding myself drifting into an argument. So I lay over the rail striv- 
ing to cool my hot face with the breath off the surface of the black 
profound that lay like a sheet of dark, ungleaming mirror beneath. 
On a sudden I heard a great sigh out in the gloom. It was as though 
some slumbering giant had fetched a long, deep, tremulous breath 
in a dream. I started, for it had sounded close, and I looked along 
the obscure deck forward, as if, forsooth, there was any sailor on 
board whose respiration could rise to such a note as that ! In a 
moment I spied a block of blackness slowly melting out like a dye 
of ink upon the indigo of the water with the faint flash of moon- 
light off the wet round -of it. A grampus! thought I; and stared 
about me for others, but no more showed, and the prodigious mid- 
night hush seemed to float down again from the stars like a sensible 
weight with one wide ripple from where the great fish had sunk, 
creeping like a line of oil to the yacht’s side, and melting soundless- 
ly in her shadow. 

This grave-like repose lasted the night through, and when early 
in the morning, awakened by the light of the newly risen sun, I 
mounted to the deck I found the ocean stretched flat as the top of 
a table, the sky, of a dirty bluish haze, thickening down and merged 
into the ocean line so that you couldn’t see where the horizon was, 
save just under the sun where the head of the misty white sparkle in 
the water defined the junction. It bafiied and bothered the sight to 
look into the distance, so vaporous and heavy it all was, with a dull 
blue gleam here and there upon the water striking into the faintness 
like a sunbeam into mist, and all close to, as it seemed, though by 
hard peering you might catch the glimmer of the calm past the 
mixture of hazy light and hues where sea and sky seemed to end. 

Jacob Crimp had charge. I asked him if all had been quiet below 
in the cabin. 

“Ay,” he answered, “ I’ve heard of nothin’ to the contrairy. Iler 
ledship came on deck during the middle watch and had a bit of a 
yarn with me.” 

“Indeed !” said I. 

“Yes, she scared me into a reg’lar clam. I was standing at the 
rail thinking I see a darkness out under the moon as if a breath of 
wind were coming along, and a woice just behind me says, ‘ What’s 
your name ?’ Nigh hand tamed my hajv white to see her, ed quiet 
she caqie an(^ her eyes like porposants,” 


AK OCEM TRAGEDY. 


323 


“ What did she talk about ?” said I, in a careless way. 

“ Asked what the sailor was a-sitting in the cabin for. ‘ To pre- 
went murder being done,’ says I. ‘ Murder !’ says she. ‘Yes,’ says I, 
‘ and to prewent this wessel from being set on fire and blown to 
yellow blazes,’ says I; ‘for God knows,’ says I, ‘what weight of 
gunpowder ain’t stowed away forrards.’ ‘Who’s a-going to do all 
this ?’ says she ; so I jist told her that Sir Wilfrid had been took 
worse, and that the order had come forrard that the cabin was to 
be watched.” 

“What did she say to that?” I exclaimed. 

“ Why, walked to t’other side of the deck and sot down and re- 
mained an hour, till I reckoned that when she went below she must 
ha’ been pretty nigh streaming with dew.” 

“ What do you think of the weather, Mr. Crimp ?” 

“ It’s agin nature,” he answered. “ Like lying off Blackwall for 
smoothness. ’Tain’t going to last, though. Nothing that’s agin 
nature ever do, whether its weather, or a dawg with two tails, or a 
cat with height legs.” 

“ I wish you were a magician,” said I ; “ I’d tassel your handker- 
chief for a strong breeze. A roasting day with a vengeance, and 
the first of a long succession, I fear.” 

At breakfast I told Miss Laura of Lady Monson’s visit on deck in 
the middle watch, and the mate’s blunt statement to her. “ It was 
a mighty dose of truth to administer,” said 1. “ She will pass some 
bad quarters of an hour, I fear. Think of old Jacob talking to her 
of murder and fire, and explosions unto yellow blazes, whatever that 
may mean, with her husband sleeping right abreast of her cabin, and 
armed, as she must know.” 

“ Has he those pistols ?” she asked. 

“ Yes,” I answered ; “ I gave the case to one of the stewards to re- 
turn to him, and now I am sorry I did so.” 

“ Of course Henrietta will be frightened,” she exclaimed. “ I do 
not envy her in her loneliness. Why should she refuse to see me? 
I easily understand her objection to showing herself on deck by day- 
light ; but I am her sister ; I could sit with her ; I could be company 
for her, win her perhaps,” she said, with a wistful look, “ to something 
like a gentle mood.” She sighed deeply and continued : “ Wilfrid 
scared me yesterday. There was that in his face that shocked me, 
but I could not explain what it was. Yet I am not the least bit 
afraid he will commit any deed of violence. Let him be twenty 
limes madder than he now is, his heart is so tender, his spirit so boy^ 


324 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


like, pure, honorable, there is so much of sweetness and affection in 
his nature that I am certain his cruelest delirium would be tempered 
by his qualities.” 

I was grateful to her for thus speaking of my poor cousin, but I 
could not agree with her. The qualities she pinned her faith to 
had suffered him, at all events, to shoot Colonel Hope-Kennedy, and 
to make nothing of the man’s death. Yet, thought I, looking at 
her, seeing how this sweet little creature values, and to a large extent 
understands him, what devil’s influence was upon the loving, large- 
hearted, child-like man when he chose the other one for his wifel 
But, fond of him and sorry for him as I was, I could not have 
wished it otherwise — for my sake, at all events ; though on her part 
it would have made her “ her ladyship,” and found her a husband 
whose brain I don’t doubt might year by year have grown stronger 
in the cheerful and fructifying light of her cordial, sympathetic, ra- 
diant character. 

I looked in upon him after breakfast. Miss Laura wished to ac- 
company me, but I advised her to delay her visit until I had ascer- 
tained for myself how he did. He was lying in his bunk, a large 
pipe in his mouth, at which he pulled so heartily that his cabin was 
dim with tobacco-smoke. His cheek was supported by his elbow, 
and his eyes fixed upon his watch, a superb gold time-keeper that 
dangled at the extremity of a heavy chain hitched to a little hook 
screwed into the deck over his head. On the back of this watch 
were his initials set in brilliants, and these gems made the golden 
circle show like a little body of light as it hung motionless before 
his intent gaze. He did not turn his head when I opened the door, 
then looked at me in an absent-minded way when I was fairly en- 
tered. 

“Ah!” he exclaimed, languidly, “it is you, Charles. You prom- 
ised to sit with me a while last night.” 

“ I did, but the heat below was unendurable. It is no better now. 
The temperature of this cabin must be prodigious. What calcula- 
tions are you making ?” said I. 

“None,” he answered. “I have slung the watch to observe if 
there is any movement in the yacht. She is motionless. Mark it. 
There is not a hair-breadth of vibration. We are afloat of course?” 
he said, suddenly, looking at me. 

“I hope so,” said I. “Afloat? Why, what do you suppose, 
Wilf ? That we’ve gone to the bottom ?” 

“ It would be all one for me,” Im answered, with a deep sigh ; an^I 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


325 


then applying himself to his pipe again with a sort of avidity that 
made one think of a hungry baby sucking at a feeding-bottle, 
lie clouded the air with tobacco - smoke and said, “ I am heartily 
weary of life.” 

“And why?” cried I; “because we are in a dead calm, with the 
equator close aboard. The very deep is rotting. A calm of this 
kind penetrates through the pores of the skin, enters the soul, and 
creates a thir.sty yearning for extinction. Being younger than you, 
Wilf, I give myself another twelve hours, and then, if no breeze 
blows, I shall, like you, be weary of life and desire to die.” 

“ It is easily managed,” said he. 

“ Yes,” cried I, startled, “ no doubt. But the weather may change, 
you know,” and not at all relishing his remark nor the looks that 
accompanied it, I seized ray hat and fell to fanning the atmosphere 
with the notion of expelling some of the tobacco-smoke through the 
open port-hole. 

“ I am of opinion,” said he, puflSng and dropping his words alter- 
nately with the clouds he expelled, while he kept his eyes fixed 
upon his watch, “ that, spite of the arguments of the divines, life is 
a free gift to us to be disposed of as we may decide. Nature is in- 
variably compensative. We are brought into this world without our 
knowledge, and, therefore, of course, without our consent, d’ye see, 
Charles?” (and here he rolled his eyes upon me) “and by way of 
balancing this distracting obligation of compulsory being. Nature 
says you may do what you like with existence; keep it or part 
with it.” 

“ I say, Wilfrid,” said I, “ there are surely more cheerful topics 
for an equinoctial dog-day than this you have lighted on. Don't 
speculate, my dear fellow ; leave poor old Nature alone. Take short 
views, and let the puzzling distance unfold and determine itself to 
your approach. It is the wayfarers who decline to look ahead, who 
whistle as they trudge along the road of life. The melancholy faces 
are those whose eyes are endeavoring to see beyond the horizon tow- 
ards which they are advancing. Tell me now, about this cabin door 
of yours. My dear fellow, it must be big enough this morning to 
enable you to pass through ; so come along on deck, will you, Wil- 
frid ?” 

“ D it, how blind you are !” he exclaimed. 

“ No, I’m not,” said I. " 

“ D’ye mean to say that you can’t see what’s happened to me 
since we last met ?” 


820 


AN OCEAN Tragedy. 


“What now, Wilfrid?” 

“ What now ?” he shouted. “ Why, man, I can’t stand upright.” 

“ Why not ?” I asked. 

“ Because I’m too tall for this cabin,” he answered, in a voice of 
passion and grief. 

“ Pray, when did you find that out ?” said 1. 

“ On rising to dress myself this morning,” he answered, “ I was 
obliged to clothe myself in my bunk. What a dreadful blow to 
befall a man ! I can’t even quit my bed now, and everything I want 
must be handed to me.” 

Well, well, thought I, God mend him soon. Hot as it was, a chill 
ran through me to the crazy, wistful, despairing look he directed at 
me, and I was oppressed for a moment with the same sickness of 
heart that had visited me during my interview with him on the pre- 
ceding day. 

“ I had resolved to sell the Bride,''' said he, mournfully, putting 
his pipe into a shelf at the back of him and folding his hands, which 
seemed to me to have grown thin and white during the past few 
days, upon his breast, “ but I sha’u’t be able to do so now.” I was 
silent. “ She will have to be broken up,” he added. 

“ Nonsense !” I exclaimed. 

“ But I say yes !" he suddenly roared ; “ how the devil else am I 
to get out of her ?” 

“ Oh, I see,” I answered, soothingly ; “ I forgot that. But, Wilf, 
since you’re too big to use this cabin for the present only — for I am 
certain you will dwindle to your old proportions before long — don’t 
you think you ought to have an attendant constantly with you, some 
one at hand sitting here to wait upon you ?” 

“ Why, yes,” said he ; “ no doubt of it. I am almost helpless 
now. But I’ll not have that rascal Muffin.” 

“ No, no,” said I. “ Nor would the stewards make the sort of 
servants you want. If I were in your place I should like to be 
waited on by a couple of jolly, hearty sailors, fellows to take turn 
and turn about in looking after me, chaps with their memories full 
of long yarns, unconventional, sympathetic, no matter how rough 
their manners, agile, strong as horses, with lively limbs, used to 
springing about. One or two such men are to be met forward 
among your crew.” 

“ A good idea !” he cried. “ Gad ! after my experiences of Muffin 
I’d rather be waited upon by the tarriest of tarry tarpaulins than 
one of your sleek, soft-stepping, trained rogues who come and ask 


AX OCEAN tragedy. 


32Y 


you for a situation with an excellent character in one pocket from 
their late master, and in the other the contents of his dressing-case. 
Ha, ha, ha !” and here he delivered one of his short roars of laughter. 

I remained conversing with him until an hour was gone. Now 
that he had put his pipe down, the atmosphere of the cabin grew 
somewhat endurable, yet the heat was extraordinarily great, and due, 
so far as one’s sensations went, not more to the temperature than to 
the incredible motionlessness of the yacht, so that there was not the 
faintest stir of air in the port-hole. I spoke of Lady Monson, fan- 
cying that the thought of her might help to steady his mind and 
bring him away from his crazy notions of growth and expansion ; 
but he would not talk of her ; as regularly as I worked round to the 
subject of her ladyship, as regularly was he sliding off into some 
other topic. Sometimes I’d think that feeling had utterly changed 
in him ; that there had grown up in him for the woman whom he 
had again and again vowed to me he adored, a loathing to which 
his innate good taste forbade him to give expression. How it would 
be if they should meet I could not tell. Her black, tragic eyes 
might not have lost their fascination, nor her shape of beauty and 
dignity its power of delighting and enamouring him. But certainly 
as we sat conversing, the sort of cowering air that accompanied his 
abrupt changing of the subject every time I mentioned his wife’s 
name was strongly suggestive of disgust and aversion. He talked 
very sensibly save about his dimensions, but I took notice in him of 
a hankering after the topic of suicide. Several times he tried to 
bring me into an argument upon it. 

“ Am I to be told,” he said, “ that a man’s life is not his own ? 
If not, to whom does it belong, pray ?” 

“ To Heaven,” I responded, sullenly. 

“ Prove it,” he sneered. 

“ Oh, ’tis too plain and established a fact to need proving,” said I. 

“ If a man’s life is his own,” he cried, “ who the deuce in this 
world has the right to hinder him from doing what he will with it?” 

“ Wilf, if this goes on,” said I, “ we shall be landed in a religious 
controversy — a thing unendurable even under the sign of the frozen 
serpent, but down here with a thermometer at about one hundred 
and twelve degrees in the cabin, no ice nearer than fifty-six degrees 
north ! — see here, my dear cousin, get you small again as soon as 
you can, back to your old size, join Laura and myself at the table 
afresh, walk the decks with us, taste the fragrance of a cigar upon 
the cool night air ; realize that your little one is at home waiting 


328 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


for you, and that on your return you will have plenty of homely 
occupation in looking after those excellent improvements in your 
property which you were telling me the other day you had in your 
mind. This sudoriferous speculation as to whether people have a 
right to hinder a man from taking his life will then exhale.” 

And so I would go on chatting, talking him away, so to speak, 
from this gloomy subject which his condition rendered depressing 
and most uncomfortably significant in his mouth. 

However, my visit to him had led to one stroke of good, for on 
quitting him I at once went to Finn, who was on deck, and told him 
how Sir Wilfrid had fallen into my scheme, and was for having a 
couple of sailors to wait upon him, one of whom should be con- 
stantly in his cabin. 

“You must be plain with the fellows, captain,” said I ; “ tell them 
that Sir Wilfrid’s craze grows upon him, and that he must be nar- 
rowly watched, but with tact.” 

“ I’ll see to it, sir,” said he ; “ can’t do better than Cutbill and 
Furlong, I think. They’re both hearty chaps, chock-a-block with 
lively yarns, and they’ve both got good tempers. But dorn’t his 
honor get no better, then, sir ?” 

“ No,” said I. 

“Dorn’t he feel as if he was a-coming back to his old shape, sir?” 

“ On the contrary,” I answered, “ yesterday he had only broad- 
ened, but this morning he feels so tall that he can’t stand upright.” 

“ Well, to be sure,” cried the worthy fellow, with his long face 
working all over with concern and anxiety. “ It’s all her ladyship’s 
doing. It’s her caper-cutting that’s brought him to this. Such a 
gentle heart as he has, too, and a true gentleman through and 
through him when his mind sits square in his head ! But Lor’ bless 
me, sir, what did he want to go and get married for ? ’Tain’t as if 
he’d wanted a home, or a gal wdth money enough to keep him. 
Not that it’s for me to say a word agin marriage, for my missus has 
always kept a straight helm steady in my wake ever since I took 
her in tow. But all the same. I’m of opinion that matrimony is an 
institootion that don’t fit this here earth. It’s a sort of lock-up ; a 
man’s put into a cell along with a gal. If she’s a proper kind of 
gal, why, well and good. The window dorn’t seem barred, and ye 
dorn’t take much notice of your liberty being gone; but if she 
tarns out to be of her ladyship’s sort, why, there’s nothin’ to do but 
to sing out through the key-hole for a rope to hang yourself with, 
or, if ye ain’t got sperrit enough for that remedy, to hang her with.” 


an ocean tragedy. 


$29 


The delivery of this harangue seemed to ease his mind, and he 
went forward, with a face tolerably composed, to give instructions to 
the two men who were to serve as companions, or, to put it bluntly, 
as keepers to Wilfrid. 

The weather held phenomenally silent and breathless. Just be- 
fore lunch I went right aft, where I commanded the length of the 
vessel, and steadfastly watched her, and though I had my eye upon 
the line of her jib-boom I did not see that the end of the spar lifted 
or fell to the extent of the breadth of a finger-nail. The sole satis- 
faction that was to be got out of this unparalleled condition of stag- 
nation was the feeling that it could not possibly last. The dim and 
dirty blue of the sea went rounding not above a mile distant into a 
like hue of atmosphere, with a confused, half-blinded vagueness of 
sky overhead that did not seem to be higher up than twice the height 
of our masts, and the appearance made you think of sitting in a glass 
globe sunk a fathom or two under water with the light sifting through 
to you in a tarnished, misty, ugly azure. A strange part of it was 
that though the sky was cloudless the atmosphere was so thick you 
could watch the sun, which hovered shapeless as a jelly-fish almost 
overhead, for a whole minute at a time without inconvenience ; yet 
his heat bit fiercely for all that ; there was a wake, too, under him, 
flakes of muddy yellow-like sheets of a ship’s sheathing scaling one 
under another as though they were going to the bottom in a proces- 
sion. If you put your hand upon the rail clear of the awning you 
brought it away with a stamp of pain. I touched the brass binnacle- 
hood by accident, and bawled aloud to the burn which raised me a 
blister on the side of my hand that lasted for three days. A sort of 
impalpable steam rose from the very decks, so that if a man stood 
still a moment you saw his figure trembling in it like the quivering of 
an object beheld in clear running water. And how am I to express 
that deeper quality of heat which seemed to come into the atmos- 
phere with the smell of the blistering of paint along the yacht’s 
sides ? 

Yet there was no fall in the mercury, no hint above or below to 
indicate a change at hand. Close alongside, the burnished water lay 
clear as crystal, and gave back every image with almost startling brill- 
iance. I remember looking over and seeing my face in the clear pro- 
found as distinctly as ever I had viewed it in a mirror. It lay like a 
daguerrotype there. It was of course as deep down as I was high 
above the surface, and I protest it was like looking at one’s self as 
thouirh one floated a drowned man. 

o 


330 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


It was the right hind of day for a plunge, and I pined for a swim, 
for the delight of the cool embrace of the glass-clear brine. But the 
skipper would not hear of it. 

“ To the first splash, sir,” he exclaimed, “ there’d sprout up a reg- 
ular crop of black fins. It isn’t because there’s nothing showing now 
that there ain’t a deal more than I for one ud care to see close at 
hand. No, sir ; be advised by me ; don’t you go overboard.” 

“ Oh, captain,” said I, “ I’ve been a sailor in my day and of course 
know how to obey orders. But I’ve cruised a good deal in my time 
in John Sharkee’s waters, and with all due deference to you I mufst 
say that whenever there are sharks about one or more will be show- 
ing.” 

“Sorry to contradict ye, sir, but my answer’s no to that,” he re- 
plied. “ Tell ’ee what I’ll do, sir — there’s nothin’ resembling a shark 
hanging round now, is there ?” 

We both stared carefully over the water, and I said no. 

“ Well, now, sir,” he exclaimed, “ I’ll bet ye a farden’s worth of 
silver spoons that I’ll call up a shark to anything I may choose to 
chuck overboard.” 

“ Make it a pennyworth of silver spoons,” said I, “ and I’ll bet.” 

“ Done,” said he, with a grin, and straightway walked forward. 
After a little he returned with a canvas bag stuffed full of rubbish — 
potato-parings, yarns, shavings enough to make it floatable, and the 
like. He hitched the end of a lead-line to it, jumped onto the taff- 
rail clear of the awning, and whirling it three or four times, sent it 
speeding some distance away on the quarter. It fell with a splash, 
and the blur it made upon the flawless surface was for all the world 
like the impress of a damp Anger upon a sheet of looking-glass. He 
towed it gently, and scarce had he drawn in three fathoms of the line 
when, a little distance past the bag, up shot the fin of a shark with a 
gleam off its black wetness as though it were a beer-bottle. He haul- 
ed the bag aboard and the fin disappeared. 

“Are they to be egg-spoons or dessert-spoons, Finn ?” said I, laugh- 
ing. “By George, I shouldn’t have believed it, though. But it’s 
always so. Let a man fancy that he knows anything to the very 
top of it, and he’s sure to fall in with somebody who has a trick 
above him.” 

But it was too hot for shark-fishing, let alone the mess of a capture 
on our ivory-white planks. At first I was for decoying the beasts to 
the surface and letting fly at them with one of the muskets below, but 
Finn suggested that the firing might irritate Sir Wilfrid. What was 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


331 


to be (lone but lie down and pant? Miss Laura was so overcome by 
the heat that for once she proved bad company. At lunch she could 
not eat ; she was too languid to talk. 

“Just the afternoon for a game of draughts,” said I, in playful al- 
lusion to the want of air. 

She waved away the suggestion with a weak movement. In fact, 
she was so oppressed that when I told her about Wilfrid’s new 
phase of growth she could only look at me dully as though all ca- 
pacity of emotion lay swooning in her heart. I sat by her side fan- 
ning her, while the perspiration hopped from my forehead like 
parched peas. 

“ Oh,” cried the little creature, “ how long is this calm going to 
last? W^hat would I give for an English Christmas Day to tumble 
down out of the sky upon us, with its snow and hail !” 

“ Let us go on deck,” said I ; “I am certain it is cooler up there.” 

We mounted the steps, but she was scarcely out of the companion- 
hatcb when she declared it was a great deal hotter above than below, 
and down she went again. After all, thought I, Sir Wilfrid and his 
wife are as well off in their cabins as though they had permitted 
themselves to wander at large about the yacht. Yet it seemed a 
roasting existence, to my fancy, for the self-made prisoners when I 
glanced aft and thought of the size of their cabins, with not air 
enough to stir a feather in the open ports, and Cutbill’s huge form 
in Wilfrid’s berth to give as distinct a rise to the thermometer there 
as though a stove had been introduced and a fire kindled in it. 

All day long it was the same smoky, confused blending of misty 
blue water and heaven shrouding down overhead and closing upon 
us, with the sea like a dish of polished steel set in the midst of it, 
bright as glass where we lay, then dimming into a bluish faintness 
into the atmospheric thickness at its confines, and the sun a distort- 
ed face of weak, yellow brightness staring down as he slided west- 
ward with an aspect that made him look as though he were some 
newly created luminary. At about six o’clock he hung over the sea- 
line glowing like a huge live cinder, and the air was filled with his 
smoky crimson glare, that went sifting and tingling into the distance 
till one was able to see, twice as far again, a red gleam of sea open- 
ing past the dimness, and a delicate liquid dye of violet melting 
down, as one might have thought, from the highest reaches of the 
heavens into the eastern atmosphere. 

“ Holloa !” cried I to Jacob Crimp, who was leaning over the side, 
with his face purple with heat and full of loathing of the weather ; 


m 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDr. 


“direct your eyes into the south, will you, and tell me what you see 
there ?” 

He turned with the leisurely action peculiar to merchant-sailors, 
lifted the sharp of his hand to his brow, and peered sulkily in the 
direction which I had indicated. 

“ Clouds,” said he — “ is that what ye mean ?” 

“Yes,” said I, “and a very noble and promising coast of them, 
too, as I believe we shall be finding out presently, when the change 
which I hope their brows are charged with shall have clarified the 
air.” 

In fact, I had just then caught sight, away down in the south 
amid the haziness there, of some bronze streaks stretching from 
south-east to south-west, with here and there dashes of exceedingly 
faint shadow of the color of flint. Much looking was not needful ; 
it was quickly to be seen that right astern of our course, though, as 
the yacht lay just then, the appearance was off the starboard beam, 
there had gathered and was slowly mounting a long, heavy body of 
thunderous cloud, scarce visible as yet save in its few bronze outlines. 

“ It will mean a change, I hope,” said I to Crimp ; “ more than 
mere thunder and lightning, let us pray. Yet the drop in the glass 
is scarcely noticeable.” 

“Time something happened, anyway,” said he. “Dum me if it 
ain’t been too hot even for the sharks to show themselves ! I allow 
the ^Jjiza Robbins ain’t over sweet just now.” 

“No; I’d rather be you than your brother to-day. Crimp.” 

“Sorry to hear from the captain,” said he, “that Sir Wilfrid’s 
got the notion in his head that he’s growed in the night till he’s too 
tall to stand upright.” 

“ Yes,” said I, “ and I hope his craze may end at that.” 

“There’s but one cure for the likes of such tantrums,” said he. 

“ And pray what is that, Mr. Crimp ?” 

“ Fright. Git the hair of a chap that’s mad to stand on end, and 
see if his crazes don’t fly clean off out of it like cannon-balls out of 
a broadside of guns.” 

“Ay, but fright, as you call it, might drive my poor cousin en- 
tirely mad, Mr. Crimp.” 

“No fear,” he answered. “Tell ’ee what I’ll ondertake to do. 
What’s the hour now ?” 

“ Call it six o’clock,” said I. 

“ Well, I’ll ondertake by half-past six to have Sir Wilfrid running 
about these ’ere decks.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


333 


“And what’s the prescription, pray?” 

“ Wliy, there’s a scuttle to his cabin, ain’t there?” 

“Yes,” I answered. 

“An’ it lies open, I allow, a day like this. Wery well. Give me 
ten minutes to go forrads and black my face and dress up my head 
according to the notion that’s in my mind ; then let me be lowered 
by a bowline over the side. I pops my head into the scuttle and 
sings out in a terrible woice, ‘ Holloa, there ! I’m the devil,’ I says, 
says I, ‘ and I’ve come,’ says I, ‘ to see if ye’ve got any soul left 
that’s worth treating for.’ And what d’ye think he’d do at sight of 
me? Why, run out of his cabin as fast as his legs ud carry him.” 

“ More likely let fly a pistol at you,” I exclaimed, laughing at 
the look of self-complacency with which the sour little fellow eyed 
me. “ However, Mr. Crimp, we’ll leave all remedies for Sir Wilfrid 
alone till we see what yonder shadow to the southward is going to 
do for us and so saying, I stepped below to change my coat for 
dinner. 


334 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A TERRIBLE NIGHT. 

Miss Laura arrived at the dinner-table. She was pale with the 
heat. She toyed with a morsel of cold fowl and sipped seltzer and 
hock. 

“ The dead calm,” said I, “ gives you a young lady’s appetite.” 

“ I am here,” she answered, “ because I do not know where else 
to be.” 

“You are here,” said I, “because you are good and kind, and 
know that I delight in your society.” 

She fanned herself. As the mercury rises past a certain degree 
sentiment falls. Emotion lies north and south of the line, hardly on 
it unless in a black skin. How death-like was the repose upon the 
yacht ! The sun had gone out in the western thickness with a flare 
like the snuff of a blown-out candle, and a sort of brown dimness as 
of smoke followed him instead of the staring red and living glare 
that accompanies his descent in clear weather in those parts. The 
cabin lamp was lighted ; it hung w'ithout a phantom of vibration, 
and sitting at that table was like eating in one’s dining-room ashore. 
I glanced my eye round the interior. Delicate and elegant was the 
appearance of the cabin. The mirrors multiplied the white oil flames 
of the silver burners ; the carpet, the drapery, the upholstery of chairs 
and couches, stole out in rich, soft dyes upon the gaze. The table 
was radiant with white damask and glass and plate and plants. Con- 
fronting me was the charming figure of the sWeet girl with whom I 
had been intimately associated for several weeks. Her golden hair 
sparkled in the lamplight; from time to time she would lift her 
violet eye with a drowsy gleam in it to mine. 

“ Heat depresses the spirits,” said I. “ I feel dull. What is go- 
ing to happen, I wonder ?” 

“Is the wind ever likely to blow again?” she asked. 

“Yes, I shall have the pleasure of conducting you on deck pres- 
ently, when I will show you a fine bank of clouds in the south that 
will be revealed to us by lightning, if I truly gather the character of 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 335 

the vapor from the bronzed lines of it which I witnessed a little 
while ago.” 

“ Have you seen Wilfrid since lunch?” 

“Yes; he talks very sensibly. He beckoned me to his bunk-side 
to whisper that Cutbill made him laugh. Anything to divert the 
dear fellow’s mind. I presume you have seen nothing of Lady 
Monson ?” 

“Nothing,” she answered, fanning her pale face till the yellow 
hair upon her brow danced as though some invisible hand was show- 
ering gold-dust upon her. 

“Jacob Crimp,” said I, softly, “is of opinion that he could drive 
AVilfrid on deck by blacking his face, looking iri upon him through 
his open port-hole, and calling himself the devil.” 

“He need not black his face,” said she, with the first smile that I 
had seen upon her lip that day, “ but if he does anything of the sort 
I hope he will be treated as Muffin was.” 

“ Yet I am of opinion,” said I, “ that a great fright would impel 
Wilfrid to make for the door. He would pass through it of course, 
and then his hallucination would fall from him.” <» 

She shook her head. “ You must not allow him to be frightened, 
Mr. Monson.” 

“ Depend upon it, I sha’n’t,” I replied. “ I merely repeat a sour 
seaman’s rude and homely prescription.” 

As I spoke the yacht slightly rolled, and simultaneously with the 
movement, as it seemed, one felt the dead atmosphere of the cabin 
set in motion. 

“ Good !” I cried, “ ’tis the first of the change. Now heave to it, 
my beauty !” 

Again the yacht softly dipped her side. I jumped up to look at 
the telltale compass, and as I did so the skylight glanced to a pale 
glare as of sheet-lightning. I waited a minute to mark the rolling 
of the craft, that was now dipping sluggishly but steadfastly with 
rhythmic regularity on undulations which were still exceedingly 
weak, and found the set of the suddenly risen swell to be north as 
near as I could judge. 

“ Well, Miss Laura,” said I, “ I think now we may calculate upon 
a breeze of wind presently, from a right quarter too.” 

I looked at the hour ; it was twenty minutes to eight. The death- 
like hush was broken ; the preternatural repose of the last day and 
night gone. Once more you heard the old familiar straining sounds, 
the click of hooked doors, the feeble grinding of bulkheads, with 


336 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


the muffled gurgling of water outside mingled with the frequent flap 
of canvas ; but I could be sure that there was no breath of air as 
yet; not the least noise of rippling flowed to the ear, and the yacht 
still lay broadside on to her course. 

“ Let us go on deck,” said I. 

She sent her maid, who was passing at the moment, for her hat, 
and we left the cabin. 

“ Holloa !” I cried as I emerged from the companion, holding her 
hand, that lay almost as cold in mine as if it were formed of the 
snow which it resembled, “ there’s another of your friends up there. 
Miss Laura,” and I pointed to the top-gallant yard-arm, upon which 
was floating a corposant, ghastly of hue but beautiful in brilliance. 

She looked up and spoke as though she shuddered. “Those 
things frighten me. What can be more ghostly than a light that is 
kindled as that is? Oh, Mr. Monson, what a wild flash of light- 
ning !” 

A wild flash it was, though as far off as the horizon. Indeed, it 
was more than one stroke : a copper-colored blaze that seemed to fill 
the heavens behind the clouds with fire, against which incandescent 
background the sky-line of the long roll of vapor stood out in vast 
billows black as pitch, while from the heart of the mass there fell a 
light like a fire-ball, to which the sea there leaped out yellow as 
molten gold. 

I strained my ear. “ No thunder as yet,” said I. “ I hope it is 
not going to prove a mere electric storm, flames and detonations 
and an up and down cataract of rain breathless in its passage, with 
a deader calm yet to follow.” 

All at once the light at the top-gallant yard-arm vanished, a soft 
air blew, and there arose from alongside a delicate, small, fairy-like 
noise of the lipping and sipping of ripples. 

“ Oh, how heavenly is this wind !” exclaimed Miss Laura, reviving 
on a sudden like a gas-dried flower in a shower of rain ; “ it brings 
my spirits back to me.” 

“ Trim sail the watch !” bawled Crimp. But there was little to 
trim ; all day long the yacht had lain partially stripped. No good, 
Finn had said, in exposing canvas to mere deadness. She wheeled 
slowly to the control of her helm, bowing tenderly upon the swell 
that was now running steadily with an almost imperceptible gather- 
ing of weight in its folds, and presently she was crawling along with 
her head pointing north before the weak fanning, with the lightning 
astern of her, making her canvas come and go upon the darkness^ 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


337 


as though lanterns green and rose-bright were being flashed from the 
deck upon the cloths. The sea was pale with fire round about us. 
Indeed, the air was so charged with electricity that I felt the tin- 
gling of it in the skin of my head as though it were in contact with 
some galvanic appliance, and I recollect pulling off my cap while I 
asked Miss Laura if she could see any sparks darting out of my 
hair. The skylight, gratings, whatever one could sit upon, streamed 
with dew. I called to the steward for a couple of camp-stools, and 
placed them so as to obtain the full benefit of the draught feebly 
breezing down out of the swinging space of the main-sail. The air 
was hot, and under the high sun it would doubtless have blown with 
a parching bite that must have rendered it even less endurable than 
the motionless atmosphere of the calm; but the dew moistened it 
now ; it was a damp night air, with a smell of rain behind it besides, 
and the gushing of it upon the face was inexpressibly delicious and 
refreshing. 

“ We are but little better than insects,” said Miss Laura; entire- 
ly the children of the weather.” 

“ Rather compare us to birds,” said I ; “ I don’t like insects.” 

“You complained of feeling depressed just now, Mr. Monson. 
Are you better ?” 

“ I am the better for this air, certainly,” said I ; “ but I don’t feel 
particularly cheerful. I shouldn’t care to go to a pantomime, for 
instance, nor should I much enjoy a dance. What is it? The in- 
fluence of that heap of electricity out yonder, I suppose,” I added, 
looking at the dense black massed-up line of cloud astern, over all 
parts of which there was an incessant play of lightning, with copper- 
ish glances behind, that gave a lining of fire to the edges of the 
higher reaches of the vast coast of vapor. It was like watching 
some gigantic hangings of tapestry wrought in flame. The imag- 
ination, rather than the eye, witnessed a hundred fantastic represen- 
tations — heads of horses, helmets, profiles of titanic human faces, 
banners, and feathers, and I know not what besides. It was very 
dark overhead and past the bows ; the thickness that had been upon 
the sky all day was still there; not the leanest phantom of star 
showed, and the stoop of the heavens seemed the nearer and the 
blacker for the flashings over our taffrail, and for the pale, phos- 
phoric sheets which went wavering on all sides towards the murki- 
ness of the horizon. 

I spied Finn conversing with Crimp at the gangway; the light- 
ning astern was as moonlight sometimes, and I could see both men 
22 


338 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


looking aloft, and at the weather in the south, and consulting. In 
a few minutes they came our way. 

“ What is it to be, Finn ?” said I. 

“ Well, sir,” he answered,“this here swell that’s slowly a-gathering 
means wind. It will be but little more, though, than an electric 
squall, I think — a deal of fire and hissing, and a burst of breeze — 
and then quietness again, with the black smother spitting itself out 
ahead. The barometer don’t seem to give more caution than that, any- 
way, sir. But there’s never no trusting what ye can’t see through.” 
lie turned to Crimp. “ Better take the main-sail off her, Jacob,” 
said he, “ and let her slide along under her foresail till we see what 
all that there yonder sinnifies.” 

The order was given ; the sailors tumbled aft ; the great stretch 
of glimmering, ashen cloths, burning and blackening alternately as 
they reflected the tempestuous flares withered upon the dusk as the 
peak and throat halyards were settled away ; the sail was furled, the 
huge main-boom secured, and the watch went forward softly as cats 
upon their naked feet. 

Ha! what is that? Right ahead, on a line with our bowsprit, 
there leaped from the black breast of the sea, on the very edge of 
the ocean, if not past it, a body of flame, brilliant as sunshine, but 
of the hue of pale blood. It came and went; but while it lived it 
made a ghastly and terrifying daylight of the heavens and the water 
in the north, revealing the line of the horizon as though the sun’s 
upper limb were on a level with it till the circle of the sea could 
have been followed to either quarter. 

'•'‘That was not lightning,” cried Miss Laura, in a voice of alarm. 

“Finn,” I shouted, “did you see that?” 

“Ay, sir,” he cried, with an accent of astonishment from the op- 
posite side of the deck. 

“ What in the name of thunder was it, think you ?” I inquired. 

“ Looked to me like a cloud of fire dropped clean out of the sky, 
sir,” he answered. 

“ No, no,” exclaimed the hoarse voice of the fellow who grasped 
the helm, “ my eye was on it, capt’n. It rose up.” 

“ Listen,” cried I, “ if any report follows it.” 

But we could hear no sound save the distant muttering of thun- 
der astern. 

“ It looked as though a ship had blown up,” said Miss Laura. 

“ I say, captain,” I called, “ d’ye think it likely thftt a vessel has 
exploded down there ?” 


AN OCEAN TEAGEDY. 


339 


“There’s been nothin’ in sight, sir,” he answered. 

“ And why ? Because the atmosphere has been blind all day,” I 
replied. “ You’d see the light of an explosion when the craft her- 
self would be hidden.” 

“ ’Twarn’t no ship, sir,” muttered the fellow at the wheel, consid- 
ering himself licensed by the excitement of the moment to deliver 
his opinion. “ I once see the like of such a flare as that o£E the 
Maldives.” 

“ What was it ?” inquired Miss Laura. 

“ A sea-quake, miss.” 

“Ha!” I exclaimed, “that’ll be it, Finn.” 

We fell silent, all of us gazing intently ahead, never knowing but 
that another wild light would show that way at any moment. 
Though I was willing enough to believe it to have been a volcanic 
upheaval of flame, I had still a fancy that it might be an explosion 
on board a ship too, some big craft that had been out of sight all 
day in the thickness ; and I kept my eyes fixed upon the horizon in 
that quarter with a half-formed fancy in me of witnessing something 
there by the light of some stronger flash than the rest out of the 
stalking and lifting blackness astern of us. 

“I cannot help thinking,” said Miss Laura, rising as she spoke, 
and arching her Angers above her eyes to peer through the hollow 
of her hands, “that I sometimes see a pale, steam-like column re- 
sembling ascending smoke that spreads out on top in the form of a 
palm-tree. Now I see it!” she cried, as a brilliant flash behind us 
sent its ghastly yellow into the far confines ahead, till the whole 
ocean lifted dark and flat to it. 

The thunder began to rattle ominously, the light breeze faltered, 
and the foresail swung sulkily to the bowing of the vessel upon the 
swell that was distinctly increasing in weight. We all looked, but 
none of us could distinguish anything resembling the appearance the 
girl indicated. 

“ If the flame rose from the sea,” said I, “ it is tolerably certain 
to have sent up a great body of steam. That is, no doubt, what you 
see. Miss Jennings.” 

“ It lingers,” she exclaimed, continuing to stare. 

“ The draught’s a-taking off,” rumbled Finn. “ Stand by for a 
neat little shower.” 

As the air died away it grew stiflingly hot again, hotter, it seemed, 
than it was before the breeze blew. The huge volumes of dense 
shadows astern were literally raining lightning; the swell ran in 


340 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


molten glass, and the still comparatively subdued roar of the thun- 
der came rolling along those sweeping, polished brows as though 
the ocean were an echoing floor, and there were a body of giants 
away down where the lightning was sending colossal bowls at us. 

All at once, and in a manner to drive the breath out of one’s body 
with the suddenness and astonishment of it, the yacht’s bows rose to 
a huge roller that came rushing at her from right ahead. Up she 
soared till, I dare say, she showed twenty foot of her keel forward out 
of water. The vast liquid mass swept past the sides with a roar that 
drowned the cannonading of the heavens. Down flashed the vessel’s 
bow, while her stem stood up as though she were making her last 
plunge. I grasped Laura by the waist, clipping hold of a backstay 
just in time to save us both from being dashed on the deck. Finn 
staggered, and was thrown. Out of the obscurity in the fore part 
of the schooner rose a wild, hoarse cry of dismay and confusion 
mingled with the din of crockery tumbling and breaking below, 
and the grinding sound of movable objects sliding from their 
places. Heaven and earth, what is it ? Another ! Not so mount- 
ainous this time, but a terribly heavy roller nevertheless. Up rose 
the yacht again to it, then down fell her stem with a boiling of 
white waters about her bow, amid the seething of which and the 
thunder of the liquid volume rushing from off our counter you 
heard a second cry, or rather groan of amazement and alarm, from 
the sailors forward, with more distracting noises below. 

I continued to grip Laura and to hold firmly to the backstay with 
my wits almost scattered by the incredible violence of the yacht’s 
soaring and plunging, and by the utter unexpectedness of the swift, 
brief, headlong dance. But now the yacht floated on a level keel 
again, and continued so to float, the calm being as dead as ever it 
had been in the most stagnant hour of the day, saving always the 
southerly undulation which the two gigantic rollers had temporarily 
flattened out, though the heaving presently began again. I saw 
Finn rubbing his nose like a dazed man as he stood staring towards 
the lightning. 

“ What could it have been ?” cried Laura. 

“ Two volcanic seas, mum,” answered the fellow who grasped the 
wheel, “ there’s most times three. Capt’n, beg pardon, sir, but that’ll 
ha’ been a mighty bust up yonder to have raised a weight of rollers 
to be felt as them two was all this distance away.” 

“The most surprising thing that ever happened to me, Mr. Mom 
son,” cried Finn, still bewildered. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


341 


A great drop of rain — a c?roj9, do I call it? it seemed as big as a 
ben’s egg — splashed upon my face, and at the same moment a flash 
of lightning swept an effulgence as of noontide into heaven and 
ocean, followed rapidly by an ear-splitting burst of thunder. 

“ Finn’s little shower is beginning,” said I, grasping Laura’s hand; 
“ let us take shelter. Anyway, the wet should cool the atmosphere 
if no wind follows. Bless me ! how disgusting if it’s to prove mere- 
ly a thunder-storm.” 

I conducted her to the cabin. At the foot of the companion- 
steps stood Lady Monson. She was without a hat, her face was of 
a deadly white, her large black eyes glowed with terror, her hair was 
roughly adjusted on her head, and long, raven-hued tresses of it lay 
upon her shoulder and hung down her back. I could well believe 
that the old lord whom Laura had met at my cousin’s found some- 
thing in this woman’s tragic airs and stately person to remind him 
of Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth. 

*‘What has happened?” she exclaimed, addressing me without 
noticing her sister. I explained. “Are we in danger?” she ex- 
claimed, with an imperious sweep of her fiery eyes over my figure as 
though she could not constrain herself to the condescension of look- 
ing me full in the face. 

“ I believe not,” said I, coldly, making as though to pass on, for I 
abhorred her manner, and was shocked by her treatment of her sister. 

She stood a moment looking up ; but there came just then a 
fierce flash of lightning; she covered her eyes; at the same mo- 
ment somebody on deck closed the companion. She then, without 
regarding us, went to her cabin. 

Hardly had we seated ourselves when down plumped the rain. 
It seemed to roll over the edge of the cloud like the falls of Niagara, 
in a vast unbroken sheet of water. There was as much hail as rain; 
the stones of the bigness you find only in the tropics, where there is 
plenty of lightning to manufacture them, and the sound of the 
downrush as it struck the deck and set the sea boiling was so deaf- 
ening that though the thunder was roaring almost overhead noth- 
ing was to be heard of it. The lightning was horribly brilliant, and 
the cabin seemed filled with the sulphur -smelling blazes, though 
there was only a comparatively small skylight for them to show 
through. In a few minutes the rush of rain slackened, the volley- 
ing claps and rolling peals of thunder were to be heard again, with 
a noise, in the intervals, of the gushing of water overboard from 
our filled decks. 


342 


AN OCEAN TKaGEDY. 


“ I hope the lightning will not strike the yacht,” exclaimed 
Laura. 

“ There is no safer place in a thunder-storm than a vessel in the 
middle of the wide ocean,” I answered. 

At that moment the burly form of Cutbill came out of Wilfrid’s 
cabin. His head dodged to right and left a while in the corridor 
while he sought to make out who we were; then distinguishing us, 
he approached. 

“ Beg pardon, sir,” he exclaimed, “ but his honor’s growed very 
crazy, and wants to know what was the cause of the yacht pitching 
so heavily just now.” 

“ I will go to his berth and explain,” said I. 

“Oh, Mr. Monson, please don’t leave me,” cried Laura. “The 
lightning terrifies me.” 

“Then, Cutbill,” said I, “give my love to Sir Wilfrid, and tell 
him that the pitching of the yacht was owing to a couple of seas 
caused, as we suppose, by a submarine earthquake away down in the 
north, probably fifteen miles distant.” 

“ Thought as much, sir,” said Cutbill, from whose face the per- 
spiration was streaming, while his immense whiskers sparkled like a 
dew-laden bramble-bush in sunrise. 

“ Also explain that I do not desire to leave Miss Jennings until 
this deafening and blinding business is over. I shall hope to carry 
my pipe to his berth by-and-by. But it must be very hot for you, 
Cutbill, in that cabin ?” 

“ Melting, sir. I feel to be a-draining away. Reckon there’ll be 
nothin’ left of me but my clothes if this here lasts.” 

“ How is Sir Wilfrid?” 

“ Well, sir, to be honest, I don’t at all like what I see in him. 
There’s come a sing’ler alteration in him. Can’t ’xactly describe it, 
sir; sort of stillness, and a queer whiteness of face, and a constant 
watching of me; his eyes are never off me, indeed. The heat’ll 
have a deal to do with it, I dessay.” 

“Some change may be at hand,” said I, “from which he may 
emerge with his miserable hallucinations gone. Yet the heat should 
account for a deal too. Give him my message, Cutbill.” 

The man knuckled his forehead and withdrew. The heat was so 
great, owing to the companion-hatch and skylight being closed, that 
my sweet companion seemed half dead with it, and leaned against 
me, with her eyes closed, almost in a swoon. But the worst of the 
storm was over apparently, for the rain had ceased, and though the 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


343 


lijrlitning was still intensely vivid, one knew by the sound of the 
thunder that what was fiercest had forged ahead of us and was set- 
tling away into the north. I called to the steward to open the 
companion doors and report the state of the weather. The moment 
the hatch lay clear to the night I felt a gush of refreshing and rain- 
sweetened air. Laura sat upright and gave a deep sigh. 

“ JDoes it rain, steward ?” I sung out. 

No, sir.” 

“Tell Captain Finn,” said I, “ to get some space of deck swabbed 
dry for Miss Jennings. The heat here is too much for the young 
lady.” 

In a few moments I heard the slapping of several swabs, and 
Finn’s long face glimmered through the open skylight. “ The 
weather’s a-clearing, sir,” he called down. “ There’s a nice little 
air a-blowing. The lady’ll find the port side of the quarter-deck 
comfortable now.” 

I conducted the girl up the ladder, but she kept her hand on my 
arm. Her manner had something of clinging in it, not wholly due 
to fear either. It was, in fact, as though she was influenced by an 
overpowering sense of loneliness, easy to understand when one 
thought of Wilfrid lying mad in his cabin and her sister shunning 
her with hate and rage. 

What Finn meant by saying the weather was clearing I could not 
quite understand. It was pitch black to windward — that is to stay, 
right over the stern — whence there was a small breeze blowing in 
faint, fitful, weak gusts, as though irresolute. The thunder-storm 
was ahead, and its rage seemed spent, for the lightning was no 
longer plentiful or brilliant, and the thunder had faded into a sullen 
muttering. A lantern or two had been brought up from below, by 
whose feeble lustre you witnessed the shadowy forms of seamen 
swabbing the decks or squeezing the water with scrubbing-brushes 
into the scuppers. The dark swell ran regularly and with power 
from the south, but there was nothing to be seen of it saving here 
and there the glittering of green sea fire upon some running brow 
to let you guess how tall it was. I went aft with Laura and looked 
over ; the wake was a mere dim, glistening, crawling, dying out after 
a few fathoms. Indeed, the yacht had but the foresail on her, with 
a headsail or two, and she seemed to owe what small way she was 
making more to the heave of the swell than to the light breeze. 
The darkness was a wonderful jumble of shadows. I never remem- 
ber the like of such confusion of inky dyes. The obscurity resem- 


344 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


bled an atmosphere of smoke denser in one place than another, a 
little thin yonder, then just over the mast-heads a stooping belly of 
soot, elsewhere a sort of faintness merging into impenetrable dark- 
ness. 

“ Lay aft and loose the main-s’l,” rattled out Finn. “ Double reef 
and then set it.” 

The breeze now began to freshen ; the watch came running on to 
the quarter-deck, and presently the wan space of double-reefed can- 
vas slowly mounted. 

“ I wish it would brighten a bit astern,” said I ; “no wolfs throat 
could be blacker. There’ll be more than a capful of wind there, 
but it will blow the right way for us, so let it come.” 

“ I feel,” said Laura, “ as though I had recovered perfect health 
after a dreadful illness.” 

“ Now she walks,” cried Finn, approaching where we stood to 
peer over the side; “blow, my sweet breeze. By the nose on my 
face, Mr. Monson, I smell a strong wind a-coming.” 

It did not need the faculty of smell to hit the truth. The breeze 
was freshening as if by magic. A little sea was already running, 
and the yeasty flashing of breaking heads spread far into the gloom. 
A loud noise of torn and simmering waters came from the bows, 
and a white race of foam was speeding arrow-like from under the 
counter. 

“ There is my sister,” whispered Laura. 

I instantly spied the tall figure of Lady Monson standing on the 
top step of the companion-ladder taking in the deep refreshment 
of the wind. She stepped on to the deck, approached, saw us, and 
crossed to the other side. She called to Captain Finn. 

“Yes, my lady.” 

“ A chair if you please. I will sit here.” 

A seat was procured from the cabin, and placed for her abreast of 
the wheel close against the bulwarks. This time Laura was not to 
be driven below by the presence of her sister. The heat in the 
cabin outweighed her sensitiveness; and then, again, there was the 
darkness of the night, which sundered the sides of the deck as 
effectually as if each had been as far off as the horizon. Yet, for 
all that, the sort of fear in which she held Lady Monson subdued 
her now through the mere sense of the woman being near, scarce 
visible as she was, just a shadow against the bulwarks. I had to 
bend my ear to catch her voice through the hissing of the wind 
aloft and the singing and the seething of the foam alongside, so low 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


345 


was her utterance. We sat together right aft against the grating on 
the port side. The helmsman stood near, with his eyes on the il- 
luminated compass-bowl, the reflection of which touched him as 
with a lining of phosphor, and exposed a kind of gilded outline of 
his figure against the blackness as he stood swinging upon the 
wheel with a twirl of it now and again to left or to right as the 
vessel’s course on the compass-card floated to port or starboard of 
the lubber’s mark. Though it was Finn’s watch below he kept the 
deck with Crimp, rendered uneasy by the thunder-black look of the 
night, along with the freshening wind and the lift of seas leaping 
with a foul-weather snappishness off the ebony slopes of the swell 
that had grown somewhat heavy and hollow. I could just distin- 
guish the dark forms of the two men pacing the deck abreast of the 
gangway. The main-sheet was well eased off, the great boom swung 
fairly over the quarter, and there was a note of howling in the pour- 
ing of the wind as it swept with increasing power into the glim- 
mering ashen hollow of the reefed canvas and rushed away out from 
under the foot of it. There was no more lightning ; the sea, with 
its glancings of foam, went black as ink to the ink of the heavens. 
There was no star, no break of faintness on high. The yacht flashed 
through the mighty shadow, whitening a long narrow furrow behind 
her, and helped by every dusky fold that drove roaring to her counter. 

On a sudden there arose a loud and fearful cry forward. 

“ Breakers ahead !” 

The hoarse voice rang aft sheer through the shrill volume of the 
wind strong as a trumpet-note with the astonishment and fear in it. 

Finn went to the side to look over, while I heard him roar out to 
Crimp, “ Breakers in his eye. The nearest land’s a thousand miles 
off.” 

I jumped up and thrust my head over the rail and saw, sure 
enough, startlingly close ahead a throbbing white line that, let it be 
what else it might, bore an amazing resemblance to the boiling of 
surf at the base of a cliff. There was nothing else to be seen ; the 
pallid streak stretched some distance to right and left. “ It’ll be a 
tide rip, sir!” shouted Finn to me, and his figure melted into the 
obscurity as he went forward to view the appearance from the fore- 
castle. 

I continued peering. “ No, it is breakers, by Heaven 1” I cried, 
with a wild leap of my heart into my very throat to the dull 
thunderous warring note I had caught during an instant’s lull in 
the sweep of the wind past my ear. 


OCEAN tragedy. 


U6 

Laura came to my side ; we strained our eyes together. 

“ Breakers, my God !” I cried again, “ we shall be into them in a 
minute.” 

Then out of the blackness on the forecastle there came from Finn, 
• though ’twas hard to recognize bis voice, a fierce, half-shrieking cry : 
“ Hard a starboard ! Hard a starboard !” 

I rushed to the wheel to assist the man in putting it hard over. 
At that instant the yacht struck. In a breath the scene became a 
hellish commotion of white waters leaping and bursting fiercely 
alongside, of yells and cries from the men, of screams from Lady 
Monson, of the grinding and splintering of wood, the cracking of 
spars, the furious beating of canvas. I felt the hull lifted under my 
feet with a brief sensation of hurling, then crash ! she struck again. 
The shock threw me on my back ; though I was half stunned, I can 
distinctly recollect hearing the ear-splitting, soul-subduing noise of 
the fall of the main-mast, that broke midway its height, and fell, with 
all its gear and weight of canvas, like a thunder-bolt from the heavens, 
on the port side of the vessel, shattering whole fathoms of bulwark. 
I sprang to my feet ; Laura had me by the arm when I fell, and she 
still clung to me. There was a life-buoy close beside us ; it hung by 
a lanyard to a peg. I whipped it off, and got it over Laura’s head 
and under her arms, and the next thing I remember is dragging her 
towards the forecastle, where I conceived our best chance would lie. 

What had we struck ? There was no land hereabouts. If we had 
not run foul of the hulk of some huge derelict buried from the sight 
in the blackness, and revealing nothing but the foam of the seas beat- 
ing against it, then we must have been caught by a second volcanic 
upheaval, into whose fury we had rushed while the devilish agitation 
was in full play. So I thought, and so I remember thinking; but 
that even a rational reflection could have entered my mind at such 
a time, that ray brain should have retained the power of keeping its 
wits in the least degree collected, I cannot but regard as a miracle 
when I look back out of this calm mood into the distraction and 
horror and death of that hideous night. The seas were breaking in 
thunder shocks over the vessel ; the wind was hoary with flying 
clouds of froth. In a few instants the Bride had become a complete 
wreck aloft. Upon whatever it was that she had struck she was 
rapidly pounding herself into staves, and the horrible work was 
being expedited outside her by the blows of the wreckage of spars 
which the seas poised and hurled at her with the weight and rage 
of battering-rams. The decks were yawning and splitting under- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


347 


foot; every white curl of sea flung inboard black fragments of the 
hull. There is nothing in language to express the uproar, the cries 
and groans and screams of men maimed and mutilated by the fall of 
the spars or drowning alongside. I thought of Wilfrid ; but the 
life of the girl who was clinging to me was dearer to ray heart than 
his or ray own. I could hear Lady Monson screaming somewhere 
forward as I dragged Laura towards the forecastle. Sailors rushed 
against me, and I was twice felled in measuring twenty paces. The 
agony of the time gave me the strength of half a dozen men ; the 
girl was paralyzed, and I snatched her up in my arms and drove 
forward, staggering and reeling, blinded with the flying wet, half- 
drowned by the incessant play of seas over the side, feeling the 
fabric crumbling under my feet as you feel sand yielding under you 
as the tide crawls upon it. I knew not what I was about nor what 
I aimed at doing. I believe I was influenced by the notion that 
since the yacht had struck bow on, her forecastle would form the 
safest part of her as lying closest to whatever it was that she had 
run foul of. I recollect that as I approached the fore -rigging, 
stumbling blindly with the girl in my arms, a huge black sea swept 
over the forward part of the wreck, and swept the galley away with 
it as though it had been a house of cards. The rush of water floated 
me off my legs ; I fell and let go of Laura. Half-suffocated, I was 
yet in the act of rising to grope afresh for her when another sea 
rolled over the rail, and I felt myself sweeping overboard with the 
velocity that a man falling from the edge of a cliff might be sensi- 
ble of. 

What followed is too dream-like for me to determine. Some 
small piece of floating spar I know I caught hold of, and that is 
what I best and perhaps only remember of that passage of mortal 
anguish. 


n48 


an ocean tragedy. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

A VOLCANIC ISLAND. 

I LOST my senses after I had been in the water a few minutes ; wheth- 
er through being nearly strangled by the foam which broke incessant- 
ly over me, or through being struck by some fragment of the wreck, 
I' cannot say. Yet I must have retained my grip of the piece of spar 
I had grabbed hold of on being swept overboard with the proverbial 
tenacity of the drowning, for I found myself grasping it when I re- 
covered consciousness. I lay on my back with my face to the sky, 
and my first notion was that I had dropped asleep on the yacht’s 
deck, and that I had been awakened by rain falling in torrents. But 
my senses were not long in coming to me, and I then discovered that 
w'hat I believed to be rain was salt spray flying in clouds upon and 
over me from a thunderous surf that was roaring and raging within 
a few strides. It was very dark ; there was nothing to be seen but 
the w'hite boiling of the near waters, with the intermittent glancing 
of the heads of melting seas beyond. I felt with my hands and made 
out that I was lying on something as hard as rock, honey-combed like 
a sponge. This I detected by passing my hand over the surface as 
far as I could reach without rising. After a little I caught sight of 
a black shadow to the right, thrown into relief by the broad yeasty 
throbbing amid which it stood. It was apparently motionless, and I 
guessed it to be a portion of the Bride. The wind howled strongly, 
and the noise of the breaking seas was distracting. Yet the moment 
I had my mind, as I may say, fully, I was sensible of a heat in the 
air very nearly as oppressive as had been the atmosphere in the cabin 
of the yacht that evening ; and this in spite of the wind which blew 
a stiff breeze, and which was full of wet besides. Then it was that 
there entered my mind the idea that the yacht had struck and gone 
to pieces upon a volcanic island newly hove up in that sudden great 
flame which had leaped upon our sight over the Bride's bows some 
two or three hours before, at a distance, as we had computed, of fif- 
teen miles, and which had seemed to set the whole of the northern 
heavens on fire. 

I felt round about me with my hands again ; the soil was unques- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


349 


tionably lava, and the heat in it was a final convincing proof that my 
conjecture was right. I rose with difficulty, and standing erect looked 
about, but I could distinguish nothing more than a mere surface of 
blackness blending with and vanishing in the yelling and hissing night 
flying overhead. I fell upon my knees to grope in that posture some 
little distance from the surf, to diminish by my withdrawal something 
of the pelting of the pitiless storm of spray ; and well it was that I 
had sense enough to crawl in this manner, for I had not moved a yard 
when my hand plunged into a hole to the length of my arm. The 
cavity was full of water, deep enough to have drowned me for all I 
knew, while the orifice was big enough to receive three or four bodies 
of the size of mine lashed together. There was no promise of any 
sort of shelter. The island, as well as I could determine its configu- 
ration by the surf which circled it, went rounding out of the sea in a 
small slope after the pattern of a turtle-shell. However, I succeeded 
in creeping to a distance where the spray struck me without its for- 
mer sting, and then I stood up, and putting my hands to the sides of 
my mouth, shouted as loud as my weak condition would suffer me. 

A voice deep and hoarse came back like an echo of my own from 
a distance, as my ear might conjecture, of some twenty paces or so. 

“Holloa! Who calls?” 

“ I, Mr. Monson. Who are you ?” 

“ Cutbill,” he roared back. 

I brought my hands together grateful to God to hear him, for how 
was I to know till then but that I might be the only survivor of the 
yacht’s company ? 

“ Can you come to me, Cutbill ?” I cried. 

“ I don’t like to let go of the lady, sir,” he answered. 

“ Which lady ?” I shouted. 

“ Miss Jennings.” 

“ Is she alive, Cutbill ?” 

“ Ay, sir.” 

By this time my sight was growing used to the profound black- 
ness. The clouds of pallid foam along the margin of the island 
flung a sort of shadow of ghastly illumination into the atmosphere, 
and I fancied I could see the blotch the figure of Cutbill made to the 
right of me on the level on which I stood. I forthwith dropped on 
my knees again and cautiously advanced, then more plainly distin- 
guished him, and in a few minutes was at his side. It was the shad- 
owy group — the outlines barely determinable by my sight even when 
I was close to — of the big figure of the sailor seated with the girl sup- 


350 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


ported on his arm. I put my lips close to the faint glimmer of her 
face, and cried “ Laura, dearest, how is it with you ? Would to God 
it had been my hand that had had the saving of you !” 

She answered faintly, “ Take me ; let me rest on you.” 

I put my arm round her and brought her head to my breast, and 
so held her to me. Soaked as we were to the, skin, like drowned 
rats, the heat floating up out of the body of volcanic stuff on which 
we lay prevented us from feeling the least chill from the pouring of 
the wind through our streaming clothes. 

“ Oh, my God, Laura !” I cried, “ I feared you were gone forever 
when I lost my hold of you.” 

“The life-buoy you put on saved me,” she exclaimed, so faintly 
that I should not have heard her had not my ear been close to her 
lips. 

“The lady had a life-buoy on, sir,” said the deep voice of Cutbill; 
“ she was stranded alongside of me, and I dragged her clear of the 
surf, and have been holding of her since, for this here soil is a cuss’d 
hard pillow for the heads of the likes of her.” 

“ Are you hurt, Cutbill ?” 

“ No, sir, not a scratch that I’m aware of. I fell overboard, and 
a swell run me ashore as easy as jumping. But I fear most of ’em 
are drownded.” 

“ Lady Monson ?” I cried. 

“ I don’t know, sir.” 

“ And my cousin ?” 

“ Mr. Monson !” he exclaimed, in a broken voice, “ the instant I 
felt what had happened I laid hold of Sir Wilfrid to drag him on 
deck. He yelled out and clung, and ’twould have been like man- 
gling the gentleman, sir, to have used my whole strength upon him 
if so be as my arms had been equal to the job of even making him 
budge. I gave up ; I wanted to save my life, sir ; I could hear the 
vessel going to pieces, and reckoned upon his following me if I ran 
out. I fear he’s drownded, sir.” 

“ Ah, great Heaven ! Poor Wilf ! Merciful Father, that this des- 
perate voyage should end thus !” 

I felt the girl shuddering and trembling on my breast. 

“Darling,” I cried, “take heart. Daylight has yet to tell us the 
whole story. How sudden ! How shocking ! Cutbill, you have 
lungs; for God’s sake, hail the darkness, that we may know if others 
are living !” 

He did so ; a faint holloa, sounding some distance from the right, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


351 


replied. He shouted again, and an answer was again returned, this 
time in another voice; it was feebler, but it proved at all events that 
there were others besides ourselves who had survived the destruction 
of the yacht. What the hour was I did not know. The night wore 
away with intolerable and killing slowness, the wind decreased, the 
sea moderated, the boiling of the surf that had been fierce for a long 
while took a subdued note, and the wind blew over us free of spray. 
Till daybreak I was cradling Laura on ray arm. Frequently she 
would sit up to lighten the burden of her form, but as often as she 
did so again would she bring her head to my breast. What the 
dawn was to reveal I could not imagine, yet I felt so much happi- 
ness in the thought of Laura’s life being spared, and in having her at 
my side, that I awaited the disclosures of daybreak without dread. 

At last there came a sifting of gray light into the east. By this 
time there was no more than a gentle wind blowing ; but the sky had 
continued of an impenetrable blackness all night, and when day broke 
I witnessed the reason of the oppressive obscurity in a surface of 
leaden cloud that lay stretched all over the face of the heavens with- 
out the least break visible in it anywhere. 

It was natural that the moment light enough stole into the atmos- 
phere to see by ray first look should be at the girl by ray side. Her 
head was uncovered; I, in slipping on the life-buoy, or Cutbill in re- 
moving it from her, had bared her hair, and the beautiful gold of it 
lay like a cloud upon her back and shoulders. It was as dry as 
were our clothes : the heat of the island had indeed served us as an 
oven. She was deadly pale, hollow-eyed, with a shadow as of the 
reflection of a spring leaf under each eye; her lips blanched, her 
countenance piteous with its expression of fear. Her dress had been 
torn by the wreckage: more shipwrecked than she no girlish figure 
could ever have looked, yet her beauty stole through all like a spirit 
breathing in her, and I could not release her without first pressing 
her to ray heart and kissing her hand and fondling it, while I thank- 
ed God that she was alive and that we were together. 

The yacht had broken in half from a few feet abaft of where her 
foremast had stood. All the after-part of her had disappeared; 
nothing remained but the bows with the black planks winding round, 
jagged, twisted, broken; an incredible ruin! The putty -colored 
shore that looked to the eye to trend with something of the smooth- 
ness of pumice-stone to the wash of the surf was dark with wreck- 
age. I saw several figures lying prone among this litter of ribs and 
planks and cases and the like ; there were others again recumbent 


352 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


liigher up — five of them I counted — a few hundred paces distant, 
two of whom, as the three of us sat casting our eyes about us, slow- 
ly rose to their legs to survey the scene. One of these was Finn, 
the other one of the crew of the Bride. 

I exclaimed, pointing to the farthest of the three figures who con- 
tinued recumbent, “ Isn’t that a woman ?” 

Cutbill stared ; Laura, whose eyes were keen, said, “ Yes. Is it 
Henrietta or my maid ?” 

Finn perceived us, and held up his hand and made as if to come 
to us; but on a sudden he pressed his side, halted, and then slowly 
seated himself. I gazed eagerly around me for signs of further life. 
It was now clear daylight, with a thinning of the leaden sky in the 
east that promised a sight of the sun presently, with assurance of a 
clear sky a little later on. It was to be easily seen now that this island 
which had brought about the destruction of the Bride was a volcanic 
upheaval created in the moment of the prodigious blaze of light we 
had viewed in the north. It was of the form of an oyster-shell, go- 
ing with a rounded slope to amidships from one margin to another, 
and was everywhere of a very pale sulphur color. It was within a 
mile in circumference, and, therefore, but a very short walk in breadth, 
and at its highest point rose to between twelve and fifteen feet above 
the sea. There stood, however, on the very apex of it, if I may so 
term the central point of its rounded back, a vast lump of rock, as I 
took it to be. But my eye ran over it incuriously. We were mak- 
ing towards Finn and the others when I glanced at it, and my mind 
was so full that I gave the thing no heed. 

It was necessary to walk with extreme caution. The island was 
like a sponge, as I have before said, punctured with holes big and 
little, some large as wells and apparently deep. But for these holes 
walking would have been easy, for everywhere between the surface 
was as smooth as if it had been polished. In many parts a sort of 
vapor-like steam crawled into the air. Now that the wind was gone 
you felt the heat of this amazing formation striking up into the atmos- 
phere, and I confess my heart fell sick in me on considering how it 
should be when the sun shone forth in power and mingled the sting 
of its glory with the oven-like temperature of this fire-created island. 

There were many dead fish about, some floating belly up in the 
wells, others dry, of all sizes and sorts, with the dark blue, venomous 
form of a dead shark a full fifteen feet long close down by the edge 
of the sea, about forty paces to the left of the wreck. 

Laura walked without difficulty. She leaned upon my arm, but 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


353 


there was no weight in her pressure. The life-buoy had held her 
head well above water, and she had been swept ashore without suf- 
fering ; the resting of her limbs, too, through the long hours of the 
night, had helped her; there was comfort also in the dryness of her 
clothes, and I was very sensible likewise that my presence gave her 
heart and spirit. 

“ It is Henrietta !” she exclaimed. 

Yes! the figure that at a distance might have passed for Lady 
Monson or Laura’s maid now proved to be the former. She had been 
resting some little distance apart from the others, with her head upon 
her arm, but suddenly she sat upright, and looked fixedly towards us. 
She, like Laura, was without covering to her head ; her pomp of 
black hair fell with gypsy wildness to her waist; her posture was 
so still, her regard of us so stubbornly intent, that I feared to dis- 
cover her mind was wanting. 

“ I will go to her,” said Laura. 

Yet I witnessed the old recoil in her as though there was nothing 
in the most tragic of all conditions to bate her sister’s subduing in- 
fluence. She withdrew her hand from my arm and pressed for- 
ward ; as she approached. Lady Monson slowly rose, tottered tow- 
ards her, threw her clasped hands upward, with her face upturned, 
and then fell upon Laura’s neck. 

Finn called feebly to me, “ God be praised you’re safe, Mr, Mon- 
son, and sound, I hope, sir ? And how is it with ye, mate ?” address- 
ing Cutbill. 

I grasped his hand ; the tears gushed into his eyes, and he pointed 
towards the wreck, and to the bodies among the stuff that had been 
washed ashore, while he slowly shook his head. He looked gray, 
haggard, hollow, ill, most miserable, as though he had lived ten years 
since last night, and was sick and near his end. 

“ Cap’n,” cried Cutbill, in a broken voice, “ ’twas no man’s fault. 
Who’s to keep a lookout for islands after this pattern ?” 

I seated myself by Finn’s side. “Keep up your heart,” said 1. 
“You are not hurt, I trust?” 

“ Something struck mo here,” said he, putting his hand to his left 
breast, “ while I was swimming, and it makes me feel a bit short- 
winded. But it isn’t that what hurts me, Mr. Monson. It’s the 
thoughts of them who’ve gone, and the sight of what was yesterday, 
sir, the sweetest craft afloat. Who’d have thought she’d crumbled 
up so fast ? reg’larly broke her back and gone into staves aft j She 
>vas stanch, but only as a pleasaie w§sseJ is,” 

.33 


354 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


I asked Cntbill to examine the people who were lying on what I 
must call the beach, and report if there was any life in them. 

“ My cousin is drowned,” I said to Finn. 

“ Oh, blessed God !” he answered. “ Cutbill knows ; he couldn’t 
get him out of his berth, I allow.” 

“ Ay, that was it,” I said, “ but this is no time for grieving for 
the dead, Finn. Regrets are idle. How are we who are spared to 
save our lives? Are the yacht’s boats all gone?” 

I ran my eye along the beach and over the sea, but nothing re- 
sembling a boat was visible. The sailor that had stood up with 
Finn when I had first caught sight of them had seated himself a 
little distance away, Lascar fashion, and I noticed him at that mo- 
ment dip his forefinger into a hole close beside him, suck it, and 
then drink by lifting water in the palm of his hand. I called to 
him, “ Is it fresh ?” 

“ Pretty nigh, sir,” he answered. 

There was such another little hole near me half full of water, as 
indeed was every well or aperture of the kind that I saw. I dipped 
as the sailor had, and found the water slightly, but only very slightly, 
brackish. This I concluded was owing to the overwhelming weight 
of rain that had followed the upheaval of this island overflowing the 
hollows and holes in it so abundantly as to drown the salt water, 
with which, of course, the cavities had been filled when this head of 
lava had been forced to the surface. I bade Finn dip his hand and 
taste, and told him that our first step must be to hit upon some 
means of storing a good supply before the heat should dry up the 
water. 

There were two sailors lying close together a few yards from 
where the seaman had squatted himself, and I called to him to know 
if they were alive. He answered yes, and shouted to them, on which 
they turned their heads, and one of them languidly rose to his 
elbows, the other lay still. 

“ It will be the wreckage that drownded most of them, and that 
hurt them that’s come off with their lives,” exclaimed Finn. “ It 
was like being thrown into whirling machinery. How many shall 
we be able to muster? I fear they're but bodies, sir,” indicating 
the figures over which Cutbill was stooping. 

All this while Laura and her sister were standing and conversing. 
I was starting to walk to the wreckage that stood at the foreshore, 
when Laura slightly motioned to me to approach her. I at once 
^ent Xq her, w?|tching eyery |qq| ef groqn4 I u^e^siired, foy X\\q 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


355 


island was just a surface of pitfalls, and one could not imagine how 
deep the larger among them might prove. Lady Monson bowed to 
me with as much dignity as if she were receiving me in a ball-room. 
Her face looked like a dead woman’s vitalized by some necromantic 
agency, so preternatural was the ghastly air produced by the contrast 
between the tomb-like tincture of the flesh and the raven blackness 
of her mass of flowing hair, and the feverish glow in her large dark 
eyes. I returned her salutation, and she extended a lifeless, ice-cold 
hand. 

“I am asking Laura what is to become of us?” she exclaimed, 
with a distinct hint of her imperious nature in her voice, and fasten- 
ing her eyes upon me as from a habit of commanding with them. 

“ I cannot tell,” I answered ; “ our business is to do the best we 
can for ourselves.” 

“How many are living?” she asked. 

“ We do not as yet know, but I fear no more than you see alive. 
My cousin is drowned, I fear.” 

Her eyes fell; she drew a deep breath and continued looking 
down ; then her gaze, full of a sudden fire, flashed to my face again. 

“ I am not accountable for his death, Mr. Monson. Why do you 
speak significantly of this dreadful thing ? I did not desire his 
death. I would have saved his life, had tlie power to do so been 
given to me. O God !” she cried, “ it is cruel to talk or to look so 
as to make me feel as if the responsibility of all this were mine !” 

She clasped one hand over another upon her heart, drawing erect 
her fine figure into a posture full of indignant reproach and passion- 
ate deprecation. Indeed, had I never met her before, and not known 
better, I should have taken her to be some fine tragedy actress who 
could not perform in the humblest article of an every-day common- 
place part without dressing her behavior with the airs of the stage. 

“ Pardon me,” I exclaimed, “ you mistake. I meant nothing sig- 
nificant. I thought you would wish to know if your husband had 
been spared. This is no moment for discussing any other question 
in the world but how we are to deliver ourselves from this terrible 
situation.” 

As I turned to leave them I thought she regarded me with en- 
treaty, almost with wistfulness, if such eyes as hers could ever take 
that expression, but she remained silent ; and giving my love a smile 
— for my love she was now, and I cannot express how my heart 
went to her as she stood pale, worn, heavy-eyed, but lacking nothing 
of her old tenderness and sweetness and fairness, by the side of her 


356 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


sister, listening timidly to the haughty, commanding creature’s 
words — I walked to meet Cutbill, who was slowly returning from 
his inspection of the bodies. 

“ They’re all dead, sir,” he exclaimed. 

“ Ah !” I cried. 

“ There’s poor old Mr. Crimp ” — his voice failed him ; he added, 
a little later, “ They look more to have been killed than drownded, 
sir.” 

“Sir Wilfrid?” 

“ No ; he isn’t among them.” 

We stood together, looking towards the bodies. 

“ Cutbill,” said I, “ we must all turn to now and collect what we 
can from the wreck that may prove useful to us. There’s nothing 
to eat here saving dead fish, which will be rotting presently.” 

The sea stretched in lead under the lead of the sky, saving in the 
far east, where the opening of the heavens there had shed a pearly 
film upon it bright with sunrise. The swell had flattened and was 
light, and rolled sluggishly to the island, sliding up and down the 
smooth incline soundlessly, save when now and again some head of 
it broke and boiled and rushed backward white and simmering. I 
sent a long look round, but there was nothing in sight. One could 
follow the ocean girdle sheer round the island with but the break 
only of the queer, rugged mass of rock in the centre where the slope 
came to its height. The line of shore which the remains of the 
yacht centred was a stretch of some hundred and fifty feet of porous 
rock like meerschaum in places, the declivity very gradual. It was 
covered with wreckage, and remains of the vessel continued to be 
washed ashore by the set and hurl of the swell. 

I went to work with Cutbill to haul high and dry whatever we 
were able to deal with. We were presently joined by two of the 
sailors. Finn and the other man made an effort to approach, but I 
perceived they were too weak and would be of no use to us, and I 
called to them to continue resting themselves. Laura and Lady 
Monson were seated together, and watched us. I could not gather 
that they conversed ; at least, though I often directed a glance at 
them, I never observed that they looked at each other as people do 
who talk. 

We toiled a long hour, and in that time had stacked, at a good 
distance from the wash of the sea, a store of articles of all kinds : 
casks of flour, salt beef, biscuit for forecastle use, a cask of sherry, 
sopae cases of potted meats, and other matters which I shoiild only 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


357 


weary you by cataloguing. Had the shore been steep we should 
probably have got nothing, but it shelved gently far past the point 
where the yacht had struck, and as the goods had floated out of the 
yacht they were rolled up like pebbles of shingle by the swell till 
they stranded ; and as I have said, even as we were busy in collect- 
ing what we wanted other articles came washing towards us. Every 
cask and barrel that was recoverable we saved, for the sake of the 
drink it might contain. Among other things, we succeeded in drag- 
ging high and dry the yacht’s foresail. This was a difficult job, for 
first it had to be cut from the gear that held it to its wreck of spar, 
and then we had to haul it ashore, which was as much as the four of 
us could manage. We also saved the yacht’s chest of tools, a box 
of Miss Laura’s wearing apparel, and a small chest of drawers which 
had stood in my poor cousin’s cabin. Cutbill and another seaman 
who stood the firmest of the rest of us on their shanks had to wade 
breast high before we could secure many of these goods which showed 
in the hollow of the swell, but were too heavy to be trundled farther 
up by the heave of the water, whose weight was fast diminishing. 
There was little risk, but it took time; plenty of rope had come 
ashore, and we secured lines to the men while they carried ends in 
their hands to make fast to the articles they went after. Then they 
waded back to us and the four of us hauled together, and in this 
way, as I have said, we saved an abundance of useful things. 

There was plenty yet to come at, but we were forced to knock off 
through sheer fatigue. Our next step was to get some breakfast. I 
was very eager that poor Finn and the man that was lying near him 
should be rallied, and counted on a substantial meal and a good 
draught of wine going far towards setting them on their legs again. 

“ Cutbill,” said I, “ while I overhaul the stores for breakfast will 
you take Dowling ” — referring to the stronger of the two men who 
had joined us — “and bury those bodies there? They make a terri- 
ble sight for the ladies to see. I have not your strength of heart, 
Cutbill ; the handling of the poor creatures would prove too much 
for me. Yet if you think it unreasonable that I should not assist — ” 

“Oh no, sir! it’s a thing that ought to be dono. We shall have 
to carry ’em ’tother side. They may slip into deep water there.” 
He called to Dowling, and together they went to the bodies. 

The carpenter’s chest was padlocked. Happily I had a bunch of 
keys in ray pocket, one of which fitted. The chest was liberally 
furnished. We armed ourselves with chisel and hammers, a gimlet 
and the like, with which tools we had presently opened all that we 


358 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


needed to furnish us with a hearty repast. We stood casks on end 
for tables, and boxes and cases served as seats. There were sailors’ 
knives in the tool-chest, and we emptied and cleaned a jar of potted 
meat to use as a drinking-vessel. The prostrate seaman, whose name 
was Johnson, was top weak to rise ; so I sent Head to him, this fel- 
low being one of the sailors who had worked with us on the beach, 
with a draught of sherry, some biscuits, and tinned meat, and had 
the satisfaction of seeing him fall to after he had tossed down the 
wine. Finn managed to join us, but he ate little and seemed broken 
down with grief. 

There is much that I find hard to realize when I look back and 
reflect upon the incidents of this wild excursion of which I have 
done my best to tell you the story ; but nothing seems so dream-like 
as this our first meal upon that newly-created spot of sulphurous 
rock in the deepest solitude of the heart of the mighty Atlantic. 
The leaden curtain had gradually lifted off the face of the east, 
leaving a band of white-blue sky there, ruled off by the vapor in a 
line as straight as the horizon. The sun floated clear in it; his 
slanting beam had flashed up the waters midway beneath into an 
azure of the delicate paleness of turquoise ; but all the western side 
lay of a leaden hue yet under the shadow of the immense stretch of 
almost imperceptibly withdrawing vapor. At one cask sat Laura 
and Lady Monson. The weak draught of wind kept my sweet- 
heart’s golden hair trembling, but Lady Monson’s hung motionless 
upon her back; it made one think of a thunder-cloud when one 
looked at it, and noticed the lightning of her glance as she sent her 
eyes in a tragic roll from the distant horizon to the fragment of 
rock, and on to the island slope, with the great, strange bulk of 
rock nodding, as it seemed, on top; and the corpse-like whiteness 
of her face was a sort of stare in itself to remind you of the bald, 
stormy glare you sometimes see in the brow of a tempest lifting 
sombre and sulkily past the sea-line. Finn’s eyes clung with droop- 
ing lids to the fragment of the Bride; Head reclined near me in a 
sailor’s reckless posture, feeding heartily; down on the beach the 
figures of Cutbill and Dowling were passing out of sight with one or 
another of their dreadful burdens and then returning. None of us 
seemed able to look that way. 

“All yon wessel’s company saving the eight of us goneP' exclaim- 
ed Finn. “ And she’s — what ? Look at her ! Just the shell of a 
yacht’s head. Oh, my God, Mr. Monson, how terrible sudden things 
do happen at sea !” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


850 


“ I never would ha’ believed that the Bride ’ud tumble to pieces 
like that though, captain !” exclaimed Head. 

“ Oh, man,” cried Finn, “ the swell lifted and dropped her. Didn’t 
ye feel it ? Poor Sir Wilfrid ! Mr. Monson, sir — I’d take his place 
if he could be here.” 

“ I believe it, Finn. I am sure you would,” I said, with a swift 
glance at Lady Monson, whose head sank as she caught the poor 
fellow’s remark. 

“ Has this island been thrown up from the very bottom of the 
sea ?” asked Laura. 

“ From the very bottom of the sea,” I answered, “ and from a 
depth out of soundings, too. It is the head of a mountain of lava, 
created in a flash of fire, and taller, maybe, from base to peak than 
half a dozen Everests one on top of another.” 

“ Do not ships sail this way ?” asked Lady Monson. 

“ Plenty of them, my lady,” answered Finn. “ No fear of our 
being long here. A h island in these waters, where it is all supposed 
to be clear, is bound to bring wessels close in to view it. The ^Liza 
Robbins oughtn’t to be fur off.” He shuddered and cried, “Poor 
Jacob Crimp ! poor old Jacob ! Gone ! and the werry echo of the 
yarn he was spinning me last night ain’t yet off my ears.” He bur- 
ied his long, rugged face in his hands, shaking his head. 

“ Is there any means of escaping should a vessel not pass by ?” in- 
quired Lady Monson. 

“ We must pin our faith on being sighted and taken off,” I 
answered. 

“But where are we to live meanwhile? What is there on this 
horrible spot to shelter us,” she exclaimed, with a sudden start and 
darting a terrified look around her. “ If stormy weather should 
come, the waves will sweep this island. How shall we be able to 
cling to it? All our provisions will be washed away. How then 
shall we live ?” 

“ It’ll take a middling sea to sweep this here rock, your ledship,” 
said Johnson, feebly. “ But it is to be swept, capt’n. What’s the 
height o’ un ?” 

“ Two fadom end on, I allow,” said Head. 

“ Silence !” roared Finn, putting the whole of his slender stock of 
vitality, as one should suppose, into his shout. “What dy’e want? 
to scare all hands by jawing? My lady, there’s nothin’ to be afraid 
of. It blew strong last night arter the yacht had stranded ; but this 
island wasn’t swept, or we shouldn’t be here.” 


360 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


I met my sweetheart’s frightened eyes, and to change the subject 
asked Lady Monson if she had reached the shore unaided. 

“ No,” she answered. “ I owe my life to the sailor who is with 
that big seaman down there,” meaning Dowling. “I am unable to 
explain. I was unconscious before I left the yacht.” 

“ Her ladyship was washed overboard,” said Finn. “ Dowling, 
who was swimming, got one of his hands foul of your hair, 
my lady. He kept hold, towed your ladyship as the swell ran 
him forrads, felt ground, and hauled ye ashore. He behaved 
well.” 

“ My poor maid is drowned !” cried Laura. 

“ Too many, miss, too many ! Oh, my God, too many !” mut- 
tered poor Finn. 

Meanwhile my eye had been resting incuriously upon the singular 
lump of rock that stood apparently poised on the highest slope, in 
the very centre of the island. On a sudden I started to a percep- 
tion that for the instant I deemed purely fanciful. The block of 
stuff was distant from where we were eating our breakfast some 
two hundred and eighty to three hundred yards. The complexion 
of it, while the sky was in shadow, had so much of the meer- 
schaum-like tint of the island that one easily took it to be a mass of 
lava, identical with the rest of the volcanic creation ; but the sun 
was now pouring his brilliant white fires upon it, and I noticed a 
deal of sparkling in it, as though it were coated with salt, or studded 
with flints of crystal, while the bed in which it lay, and the slope 
round about, were of a dead, unreflecting, pale yellow. My fixed re- 
gard attracted the attention of the others. 

One of the two seamen looked and called out, “ That ain’t a part 
of the island, sir.” 

“ What form does it take to your fancy ?” I asked, addressing my 
companions generally. 

There was a pause, and Laura said, “ It looks like a ship, an un- 
wieldy vessel coming at ns. Do you notice two erections like bro- 
ken masts?” 

Finn peered under his hand. 

“It certainly looks uncommonly like as if it had been a ship in 
its day,” he exclaimed, “ but these ’ere convulsions, I am told, are 
made up o’ fantastics.” 

Cutbill and his companion were now approaching ; they were fiery 
hot, their faces crimson, and they moved with an air of distress. 
Yet Cutbill made shift to sing out as he approached, pointing as he 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


361 


spoke, “Mr. Monson, there’s a ship ashore up there, sir. You get 
the shape of her plain round the corner.” 

“ Come, lads !” I cried, “ sit and fall to. There’s plenty to eat 
here and drink to give you life. You have got well through a 
bitter business. Finn, do you feel equal to inspecting that object ?” 

“Ay, sir,” he answered. “I’m drawing my breath better. But 
it’s the mind, Mr. Monson — it’s the mind.” 

“Then come, all of us who will,” I cried. “Laura, here is my 
arm for you, and here is a pocket-handkerchief too, to tie round 
your head.” 

Lady Monson looked at her sister and rose with her. Laura 
came to my side and we started. 


36 ^ 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

WE BOARD THE GALLEON. 

The surface of the island was so honey-combed that one dared 
not look elsewhere than downward while walking, and so it was 
not until we had drawn close to the huge rock-like lump that I was 
able to give my attention to it. 

How am I to describe this astonishing body ? It was most clearly 
the petrified fabric of a ship, a vessel of considerable tonnage that 
had been hove from the dark ocean-bed on which it had been resting, 
for God alone could tell how many scores of years, by the prodig- 
ious eruption that had sent this head of rock on which we stood 
rushing upward through the deep into the view of the Atlantic 
heaven. She had been apparently a galleon in her day, and to 
judge from such shape as I could distinguish in her, she was prob- 
ably upwards of a century and a half old. She was not much above 
three times as long as she was broad, and the figure of her, therefore, 
was only to be got by viewing her broadside on. She was incrusted 
with shells of a hundred different kinds and colors, with much ex- 
quisite drapery of lace-like weed. This shelly covering was mani- 
festly very thick and astonishingly plentiful, but though it increased 
her bulk it did not greatly distort her shape. You saw the form of 
the craft plain in the astonishing growth and adhesion. There was 
the short line of poop, and then a little longer line of quarter-deck, 
then a deep waist broken again by the rise of the forecastle. You 
could follow the curve of the stem and cut-water, and plainly see 
the square of the counter rising castle-like to a height of hard upon 
thirty feet from the surface on which she lay. She suggested the 
structure of a ship built of shells. The remains of a couple of masts 
shot up from her decks, one far forward, the other almost amidships, 
each about twelve feet high, as richly clothed as the hull with shells 
of many hues. She lay with a slight list ; that is to say, a little on 
one side, the inclination being to starboard, and so far as one could 
guess, she was disconnected from the bed on which she reposed — 
probably thundered clear of it by the shock of earthquake, though 
she looked as solid as a block of cliff. Sparkling lines of water 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


363 


spouted from her upper works, but from below that part of her 
main-deck which sailors would call the covering board she showed 
herself as tight as if she had been newly calked and launched. 

The sunshine streamed purely and with great power upon her, 
and though she had scarce been distinguishable from the rest of the 
island save in the shape of her when the sky was dark with cloud, 
she now flashed out on that side of her that faced the sun into the 
most barbarically glorious, richly colored, admirably novel object 
that ever mortal eye lighted upon in this wide world. Pearl col- 
ored shells blended with blue and green; there were ruby stars; 
growths of a crystalline clarity prismatic as cut glass; shells of the 
cloud-like softness of milk but of the hardness of marble; patches 
of incrustation of an amber tint, others of a vivid green delicately 
relieved by the scoring of the burnished edges of mussel-like shells. 
The falls of water fell like curves of rainbow over this magnificence 
and splendor of marine decoration ; the tapestry of weed hung moist 
and of an exquisite vividness of green. The short height of masts 
glittered in the sunshine with many lovely colors of silver and rose 
and other hues which made a very prism of each shaft of spar. 

The whole of us stood gazing, lost in wonder, then Finn cried, 
“This is a wonderful sight, Mr. Monson.” 

“ An old galleon full o’ treasure. Who’s to know ?” exclaimed the 
seaman Head. 

“From what depth will she have been thrown up?” asked Laura. 

“ From a soil too deep for human soundings,” said I. “Wonder- 
ful that the blaze of fire in the heart of which she must have soared to 
this surface did not wither her up. But she seems perfect, not an 
ornament injured, not a jewel on her broken, no hint of having been 
scorched that I can anywhere see. She will have belonged to the 
last century, Finn.” 

“Ay, sir,” he answered, “and mayhap earlier. How would she 
show if she was to be scraped ?” 

He held his long chin between his thumb and forefinger, and stared 
gapingly at the wondrous object. 

“ We might find shelter in her,” said the cold, haughty voice of 
Lady Monson, “ if the sea should break over the island.” 

“ Happily suggested !” I exclaimed. “ What sort of accommoda- 
tion will her decks offer?” 

“Grit, I reckon,” said Head. 

“ Well, we can pound a space clear for ourselves, I hope,” said I; 
“there’s canvas enough yonder on the beach to furnish us with a roof.” 


AK OCDAN tragedy. 


m 

“And she’ll give us a rise of twenty or thirty feet above the level 
of the island, sir,” said Finn, “ pretty nigh as good as a mast-head 
lookout. A wessel ’ll have to pass a long way off not to see her ! 
Well, thank God ! says I, for that she’s here. It’s something for a 
man’s sperrits to catch hold of, ain’t it, Mr. Monson? Lor’ bless me, 
how beautiful them shells look!” 

Cutbill and Dowling now joined us, and stood staring like men 
discrediting their senses. 

“ William,” said Finn, addressing Cutbill, “ if ye had her safe 
moored in the Thames, mate, just as she is, there’d be no need for 
you to go to sea any more. There’s folks as ud pay a pound a head 
to view such a hobject.” 

“What’s inside of her?” said Dowling. 

“That’s to be found out,” answered Cutbill. “ Smite me, Mr. Mon- 
son, sir, if the lookout of exploring of her ain’t good enough to stop 
a man from being in a hurry to get away from here.” 

“ Will not one of the sailors climb on board,” said Lady Monson, 
“that we may know the state of her decks? We shall require a 
shelter to-night if a ship does not come to-day and take us off;” and 
she seat her black eyes flashing over the sea-line as she spoke, but 
there was nothing to be seen. 

“ How is a man to get aboard ?” exclaimed Dowling ; “ there’s 
naught to catch hold of, and sailors ain’t flies.” 

“ Pile casks one on top of another,” said I, “ and then make a 
pick-a-back, the lightest hand last. I’ll lend my shoulders.” 

Finn shook his head. “ No need to risk our necks, sir. The bows 
are the lowest part. Nothin’s wanted but a coil of rope. Dowling, 
you look about the freshest of us, my lad. Step down where the 
raffle is, will ’ee, and bring along a length of the gear there.” 

The fellow trudged to the beach very willingly. Had he been a 
merchant-sailor pure and simple one might have looked in vain 
under such conditions for hearty obedience. Mercantile Jack when 
shipwrecked has a habit of viewing himself as a man freed from all 
restraint, and instantly privileged by misery to grow mutinous and 
in all senses obnoxious. But the instincts of the yachtsman come 
very near to those of the man-of-war’ s-man ; and indeed, for the 
matter of that, I would rather be cast away with a crew of men who 
knew nothing of seafaring outside yachting than with a body of 
blue-jackets — I mean as regards the promise of respectful behavior. 

Presently Dowling returned with a line coiled over his shoulder. 
In truth, rope enough to rig a mast with had come ashore with the 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


365 


yards, gaffs, and booms of the yacht, and the sailor had had nothing 
to do but to clear away as much line as he wanted and bring it to 
us. Cutbill took the stuff from him, and coiled it down afresh over 
his fingers as though he were about to heave the lead, then nicely 
calculating distance and height with his eye, he sent the fakes flying, 
lasso fashion, sheer over the head of the huge, glittering, fossilized 
structure where the incrustation forked out in a manner to suggest 
the existence of what the ancient mariner termed a “ beak,” and the 
end was caught by Dowling, who had stepped round the bows of the 
craft to receive it. 

“ Now up you go, ray lad,” shouted Cutbill ; and the sailor, who 
was of a light figure, mounted as nimbly as a monkey, hand over 
hand, three of us holding on to the rope ’tother side to secure it 
for him. He gained the deck, and looked about him with an air of 
stupid wonder. 

“ Why, it’s a plantation !” he shouted ; “ young cork-trees a-sprout- 
ing, and flowers as big as targets ! vegetables right fore and aft, and 
a dead grampus under the break of the poop !” 

“Avast!” bawled Cutbill; “tarn to and see if the stump of that 
there foremast is sound.” 

The spar was stepped well forward, after the ancient custom, with 
a slight inclination towards the bow. Dowling made for it with his 
mouth open, staring around and looking behind him as he went, 
and treading as though he moved on broken glass. He drew close 
to the shell-covered shaft, that glowed with the tints of a dying dol- 
phin, and glittered and coruscated with the richness and variety of 
dyes beyond imagination to every movement that one made. After 
briefly inspecting it he sang out, “Strong enough to moor a line- 
of-battle ship to, sir 1” 

“ Then make the end of the line fast there !” roared Cutbill. 

This was done, and up went the burly salt, puffing and blowing, 
swinging a crimson visage round to us as he fended himself off the 
lacerating heads of the shelly armor with his toes. He got over the 
side, stood staring as the other had, and then, tossing up his hands, 
shouted down : “ Looks like that piece, capt’n, that’s wrote down in 
the Bible ’bout the Gard’n of Eden. Only wants Adam and Eve, 

d n me ! Never could ha’ dreamed of such a thing. And it’s the 

bottom of the sea, too. Why, it’s worth being drownded if it’s all 
like this down there.” 

“ Any hatches ?” cried Finn. 

Can’t sec nothin’ for shells and vegetables,” 


366 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Well, just take a look round, will ’ee, and let’s know if there’s 
shelter to be got for the ladies.” 

Dowling sang out, “ Main-deck’s pretty nigh awash, but there’s a 
raised quarter-deck, and it’s dry from the break of it to right aft.” 

“She will be full of water,” said I to Finn. “Why not scuttle 
her ? There are a couple of augers in the carpenter’s chest. Is that 
growth to be pierced, though ?” 

“ Can but try, sir,” he answered. 

“ Well,” said I, “ one thing is certain. The sun will be standing 
overhead presently. There’s no wind, and we must absolutely con- 
trive to protect the ladies from the pouring heat. There’s but one 
thing to do for the moment, that I can see. We must manage to 
rig up a sail aboard to serve as an awning. But how are the ladies 
to be got into her ?” 

Lady Monson and Laura stood close, listening anxiously. 

“ Why,” answered Finn, after thinking for a few moments, “ we 
must rig up a derrick. There’s blocks enough knocking about 
among the raffle down there to make a whip with. The consarn’ll 
sarve also to hoist the provisions up by. I allow that if once we 
get stowed up there, there’ll be nothin’ to hurt us, so far as seas 
goes, in the heaviest gale that can come on to blow.” 

“ I shall be miserable until I am on board,” said Lady Monson. 
“It is dreadful to be dependent upon this low rock for one’s life. 
The tide may rise.” 

I met Laura’s sad and wondering eyes, and divined her thoughts. 
The instinct of self-preservation was indeed a very powerful develop- 
ment in her ladyship’s bosom. Is she not ashamed to let us all see 
how anxious she is about her life, Laura’s glance at me seemed to 
say, after the sufferings and death her behavior has brought about 
— her husband drowned, the unhappy man she abandoned her home 
for floating in the depths beyond the horizon there — \ 

Cutbill descended, followed by Dowling. 

“’Tis an amazing sight, sure/y,” he exclaimed, wringing the per- 
spiration in a shower from his forehead. “ The decks is flinty hard 
with shell, but I reckon a space is to be cleared just under the break 
of the poop; and it feels almost cool up there arter these here 
rocks. There’s a porpoise aft as’ll want chucking overboard. ’Tain’t 
no grampus, as Dowling says. Only I tell ye, capt’n, that there 
deck’s a sight to make a man see twenty times more’n he looks at.” 

Finn’s spirits had improved through his having something else to 
t/bink of tb^p tbo loss of the yacbt pud tbo drowuing of ber people, 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


367 


He was fetching his breath, too, with comparative ease, and only at 
long intervals brought his hand to his side. This improvement in 
him greatly cheered me. I liked the rough, homely sailor much, 
and his death would have been a blow. The man Johnson had by 
this time made shift to rise and join us, but he walked with a weak 
step, and looked very sadly, as though a deal of the life had been 
washed out of him in his struggle to fetch the shore. He was of no 
use to us, and I told him to go and sit in the shadow of the hull out 
of the blaze of the sun. 

Finn then called a council : Cutbill, myself, Dowling, and Head 
gathered round him, and very briefly and with but little talk we 
concerted our plans. We were all agreed that the astonishing shell- 
armored fabric could be made to yield us a tolerably secure asylum, 
and that the elevation of its deck would enable us to command a 
wide view of the sea, and that therefore it was our business forth- 
with to convey all that we could recover from the yacht into her. 
I went to work with the rest and toiled hard. The labor mainly 
consisted in dragging and pulling, for we had to bring a spare boom 
to the galleon from the beach to serve as a derrick for hoisting; 
then such sails as had been washed ashore ; then the provisions. It 
was like drawing teeth; everything seemed to weigh about five 
times more than it should. The work was made the harder, more- 
over, by the character of the ground. Had the surface been smooth 
as earth is we could have tramped with tolerable briskness ; but our 
staggering march to the galleon under heavy loads was converted 
into a very treadmill ex,ercise by our having to dodge the little holes, 
large enoughLjii^neatlj^_fikJhe leg to as high as the knee, or the 
wider yawns and great wells, of which some were big enough to re- 
ceive the whole body of us, goods and all, in one gulp. I had by 
this time ascertained that the water in the larger pores and holes 
was too salt to drink. It was in the smaller hollows only, and 
these, indeed, among the shallowest, that the water lay scarce brack- 
ish. In short, the fall of rain, great as it was, had not lasted long 
enough to drown the brine in the deeper wells. This was an im- 
portant discovery, for the fierce sun would soon dry up the shallow 
apertures; and had we taken for granted that the contents of the 
deeper ones were fit to drink, we should have been brought face to 
face with thirst. 

But happily nearly the whole of the yacht lay in piecemeal be- 
fore us. All that had been in her forepart, which yet stood, had 
gashed opt and rolled ashore or stranded within pending distafnce. 


368 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


Our fresh- water had been carried in casks, as I believe was the cus- 
tom for the most part in those days; some of the barrels had 
bulged, but a few had been swept high and dry. There were 
empty water-casks, moreover, which had floated up, and these we 
rolled aside to be filled the moment we had leisure to devote to that 
task. There were no bodies to be seen, and I was thankful for it. 
The sharks, no doubt, had been put to flight by the explosion, but 
they would not be long in returning; and, indeed, I gathered they 
were in force again — though I saw nothing resembling a fin — from 
the circumstance of none of the dead, saving the few forms which 
Cutbill and Dowling had slipped into the sea on the other side of 
the island, having drifted in with the wreckage. 

The leaden curtain had drawn far down into the west ; two-thirds 
of the heavens now were a dazzle of silver blue, with a high sun 
looking down out of it with a roasting eye, and the water a surface 
of shivering glory south and east, and edged crape-like in the west, 
but not a cloud of the size of a thumb-nail anywhere save there. A 
thin line of surf purred delicately upon the gradual slope of sulphur- 
lined beach with a weak, metallic hissing sounding along the length 
of it as the sparkling ripple slipped up and down upon the honey- 
combed beach. The remains of the yacht’s bows lay gaunt and 
motionless some distance down. Her gilt figure-head glowed in the 
sunshine, and made a brightness under it that rode like a fragment 
of sunbeam upon the delicate lift of sea rolling inward. A plank 
or two rounding into the stern were gone, and you could see day- 
light through her. It seemed incredible that so stout a little craft 
should have gone to pieces as she had ; but then the swell had been 
heavy and the ground on w'hich she beat iron-hard, and then again 
her scantling was but that of a pleasure vessel, though the stanchest 
of its kind. 

Meanwhile I conveyed, with the help of Cutbill, into the shadow 
that was cast by the galleon, as I will call her, Laura’s box of wear- 
ing apparel which we had fallen in with early in the morning. Odd- 
ly enough, it was the only trunk or portmanteau that had come 
ashore. Some sailors’ chests had floated in, but nothing belonging 
to any of us aft saving this box of Laura’s and a small chest of 
drawer’s out of Wilfrid’s cabin, one drawer gone, and the others 
containing articles of no use to us, such as gloves, neck-ties, writ- 
ing material, manuscripts sodden and illegible. The removing her 
clothes from the box and spreading them to dry found Laura occu- 
pation, and something else, therefore, to think of than our miserable 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


369 


condition. Her sister very early had withdrawn to the shadow cast 
by the galleon, and there sat, Johnson lying a little way from her — 
apparently stirless for a whole half-hour together — as much a fossil 
to the eye as the wondrous structure that sheltered her. The black 
cloud of hair upon her back, her spectral white face and dark eyes, 
gave me an odd fancy of her as the figure-head of the mysterious 
fabric that had risen in thunder and flame from the green stillness 
of its ocean tomb, where it had been lying so long that the mere 
thought of the years put a shiver into one spite of the broiling orb 
that hung overhead. Heavens ! I remember thinking in some in- 
terval of toil, during which I paused, panting, with my eye directed 
towards the galleon, figure a lonely man coming ashore here on a 
moonlit night and beholding that woman seated as she now sits, 
looking as she now looks, stirless as she now is, in the shadow of 
that shell-covered structure shimmering like a lunar rainbow to the 
moonbeam ! 

It was like passing from death to life to send the gaze from Lady 
Monson to Laura as the little sweetheart busily flitted from sunshine 
to shadow, spreading the garments to the light, her hair flashing 
and fading as she passed from the radiance into the violet shade, 
her figure the fairer to my enamoured eyes maybe for the ship- 
wrecked aspect of her attire, that enriched by fitful and fascinating 
revelations the beauty of her form by an art quite out of the reach 
of the nimblest of dress-making fingers. Her spirits and much of 
her strength seemed to have returned to her. Often she would look 
my way and wave her hand to me. 

Half an hour after noon by the sun — for my watch had stopped 
when I tumbled overboard, and so had Laura’s and Lady Monson’s 
— we all assembled under the overhanging counter of the galleon 
for a mid-day meal. The sun was almost overhead, and there was 
very little shadow, which forced us to sit tolerably close together, 
and I could see that her ladyship did not very much relish this inti- 
mate association with the rough sailors ; but it was either for her or 
for them to sit out in the scorching, blinding light, and as she did 
not offer to go, I insisted on the poor fellows keeping their places, 
though Finn and Cutbill shuffled as though they were for backing 
away. She perceived my indifference to her sensitiveness, and shot 
a look of hate at me. However, I was not so insensible as she imag- 
ined, for I was very careful to scarcely glance at her ; for there she 
sat, unveiled, her head uncovered, close to, to be peered at, if one 
chose, as if she were a picture or a statue, and I would not pain 
24 


370 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


what weak sense of shame, what haughty confusion there might be 
in her by a single lift of my eyes to her face, saving when I accosted 
her or she me. I observed that the sailors were studious in their 
disregard of her. There was not a man of them, I dare say, but 
would have squinted curiously at her out of the corner of his eyes 
on board the yacht had she shown herself on deck ; but here it 
would have been taking an unfair advantage of her : their instincts 
as men governed them, and no fine gentleman could ever have ex- 
hibited a higher quality of breeding than did these rough Jacks in 
this respect, as they squatted munching biscuit and potted meat, and 
handing on to one another the jar of sherry and water. 

But often, though swiftly and very respectfully too, their glances 
would go to Laura. They would look as though they found some- 
thing to hearten them in her sweet pale face, her kind smile, her 
pretty efforts to bear up. 

“ There ought to be a ship passing here before long,” said Finn, 
with a slow stare seaward ; “ ’tain’t as if this here island was right 
in with the African coast.” 

“ The 'Liza Robbins should be looked out for, capt’n,” said Cut- 
'bill; “she was dead in our wake when we drawed ahead, steering 
our course to a hair.” 

“Strange that all the yacht’s boats should have disappeared,” 
said I. 

“ Hammered into staves, your honor,” said Finn ; “ ye may see 
bits of them on the beach.” 

“ I couldn’t swear to it,” said Johnson, languidly ; “ it was so bloom- 
ing dark ; but I’ve got a notion of seeing some of the men run aft 
when the yacht struck, as though making for one of the boats.” 

“ I was knocked down by a rush of several sailors,” said I. 

“ If any of our chaps got away in a boat, why aren’t they here ?” 
asked Dowling. 

“ Why, man, consider the size of this island,” I exclaimed ; “ a 
few strokes of the oars, the boat heading out, or to the eastward, 
say, would suffice to send them clear of this pin’s-head of rock, and 
then once to leeward they’d blow away. But we need not trouble 
to speculate : I fear nobody has escaped but ourselves.” 

Finn shook his head with a face of misery, putting down what he 
was eating and fixing his eyes, that had moistened on a sudden, on 
the rock he sat on. 

“How long will it be before we enter the ship?” asked Lady 
Mon son, 


AX OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


371 


‘‘Oh, we shall all be aboard before sundown, I don’t doubt,” 
said I. 

“Will yon not have some signal ready in case a vessel pass?” she 
demanded. 

“We’ll stack the materials for a bonfire, but there is much to be 
done meanwhile,” said 1. 

I believed she would have addressed Cutbill or Finn rather than 
me, but for the downright insolence her disregard of my presence 
would have signified. No doubt she hated me for being her husband’s 
cousin, for joining in his chase of her, for having helped in the duel 
that cost the colonel his life, for the part I had acted aboard the 
'Liza Robbins, and for being a witness of her defeat and shame and 
humiliation. Yes, such a woman as Lady Monson would violently 
abhor a man for much less than this. Why should poor Wilfrid 
have been drowned and she spared? I remember thinking. The 
world would surely have been the better off for the saving of one 
honest heart out of the yacht’s forecastle than for Lady Monson’s 
deliverance. But reflections of this kind were absurdly ill-timed. I 
started'from them on meeting Laura’s gaze pensively watching me, 
and then sprang to my feet to the perception of the overwhelming 
reality that confronted us all. 

“ Come, lads,” said I, “ if you are suflSciently rested shall we turn 
to?” 

They instantly rose; Johnson staggered onto his legs, but I told 
him to keep where he was. 

“ You’ll be hearty again to-morrow,” said I, “ and we are strong 
enough to manage without you.” 

He knuckled his forehead with a grateful smile and lay down 
again. 

The work ran us deep into the afternoon. There did not seem 
much to be done, but somehow it occupied a deal of time. The 
heat was a terrible hinderance; it fell a dead calm, the atmosphere 
pressed with a tingling vibration to the skin, and swam in a swoon- 
ing way, till sometimes on pausing and bringing my hand to my 
brow I would see the hot blue horizon beginning to revolve as though 
it were some huge teetotum, with myself perched on the top of the 
middle of it. With a vast deal of trouble and after a long time a 
boom was secured to the stump of the galleon’s foremast with a 
block at the end of it, through which a line was rove. There had 
washed ashore close to the great dead shark down on the beach a 
small arm-chair of red velvet that had formerly stood in Baura’s 


372 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


cabin. Cutbill spied it and brought it to Finn, and said tliat it 
would do to hoist the ladies on board by. It was accordingly car- 
ried to the galleon, and made fast to one end of the whip. Dowl- 
ing then climbed on board while the others of us stood by to sway 
away. 

“ Will you go up first, Lady Monson ?” said 1. 

She coldly inclined her head and came to the chair, sweeping her 
hair backward over her shoulders, with a white, scared look at the 
height up which she was to be hoisted. I snugged her in the chair, 
and passed the end of a piece of line round her, and all being ready, 
we ran her up hand over hand till she was on a level with the shell- 
bristling rail of the galleon’s forecastle. Here Dowling caught 
hold of the chair and drew it inboard, singing out to us to lower 
away, and a few moments after the chair was floating over the side 
empty. 

We then sent Laura aloft. She smiled at me as she seated her- 
self, but there was a deal of timidity in her sweet eyes, and her smile 
vanished as if by magic the moment the chair was off the ground. 
However, she soared in perfect safety and was received by Dowling, 
and no sooner had she sent a look along the decks than her head 
shone over the side and she called down to me, “ Oh, Mr. Monson, it 
is exquisite — a very Paradise of shells and sea-flowers !” 

“Will you go up now, sir?” said Finn. 

“ Not yet,” I replied ; “ I can be useful down here. Let us get 
Johnson hoisted out of the way first.” 

Cutbill brought the poor fellow round to the chair, and we sent 
him up. Dowling remained on the vessel to receive what we whip- 
ped up aloft to him, and in the course of an hour from the time of 
swaying Lady Monson aboard we had hoisted all the provisions we 
had brought into the shadow of the galleon — Laura’s box of clothes, 
the yacht’s foresail and fore stay-sail, a bundle of mattresses that had 
washed out of the forecastle, the cask of sherry, two casks of fresh- 
water, the carpenter’s chest, and other matters which I cannot now 
recall. This was very well indeed, but we were nigh -hand spent, 
and had to fling ourselves down upon the pumice-rocks to rest and 
breathe ere tailing onto the whip again to hoist one or another of 
us up. 

The sun was now in the west, his light a rich crimson and the sea 
a sheet of molten gold polished as quicksilver under him. The gal- 
leon’s shadow lay broad on her port side, and in it we sprawled with 
scarlet faces and dripping brows, 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


srs 

“ No chance of being picked up in such weather as this, sir,” said 
Finn, who had worked as hard as any of us and seemed the better for 
his labors, though I observed that his breath was caught at times as 
if by a spasm or shooting-pain in the side. 

“ We must have patience,” said I, “ but at the worst ’tis a tolera- 
bly comfortable shipwreck, Finn. We are well stocked, and there’s 
a deal more yet to be had, if the sea will keep quiet. We’re not 
ashore upon the Greenland coast, all ice ahead of us and all famine 
astern.” 

“ No, thank the Lord,” quoth Cutbill ; “ it’s a bad shipwreck when 
a man daresn’t finger his nose for fear of bringing it away from his 
face. Better too much sun,” says I, “ than none at all.” 

“And then again,” said I, with a glance up at the marvellous, 
shell-incrusted conformation that towered with swelling bilge over 
our heads, “ here’s as good a house as one needs to live in till some- 
thing heaves in view.” 

“ I’m for scuttling her at once, capt’n,” cried Head ; “ she’ll hold 
a vast o’ water, and the sooner she’s holed the sooner she’ll be empty. 
Who’s to tell what’s inside of her ?” 

Cutbill ran his eyes thirstily over the huge fossil. “ She was 
a lump of a craft for her day,” said he, “ and when wessels of her 
size put to sea they was commonly nearly all rich ships, so I’ve 
heerd.” 

“ Head, you’re right,” cried Finn. “ Ye shall be the first to spike 
her — if ’ee can. On deck there !” 

“ Holloa !” answered Dowling, putting his purple, whiskered face 
over the line of shells. 

“ Send down the augers and a chopper out of the carpenter’s 
chest.” 

“Ay, ay, sir!” he answered, and in a few moments down came the 
tools. 

“ Before you make a start,” said I, “ hoist me on aboard, will you ?’* 

I planted myself in the chair, was cleverly run up, got hold of 
Dowling’s hand, and stepped onto the deck. 

I was prepared to witness a rich and gorgeous show, but what I 
now viewed went leagues beyond any imagination I could have con- 
ceived of the reality. The ancient fabric had four decks ; that is to 
say, the forecastle, the main-deck, that was like a well, a short raised 
quarter-deck, and abaft all a poop going to the narrow, castle-like 
crown of the head of the stern. These decks, together with the 
inside of the bulwarks, were thickly incrusted with shells of every 


374 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


imaginable hue and shape and size; but in addition there flourished 
densely among these shells a wonderful surface of marine growths, 
not so dense but that the shells could be seen between, yet plentiful 
enough to submit each deck to the eye as a glorious marine parterre. 
It was like entering upon a scene of fairy-land ; there were growths 
of a coralline appearance of many colors, from a Tyrian dye to a 
delicate opalescent azure, huge bulbs like bloated cucumbers, flowers 
resembling immense daisies, with coral-hard spikes projecting from 
them like the rays which dart from the sun ; long trailing plants like 
prostrate creepers, others erect, as tall as my knee, resembling ferns, 
of a grace beyond all expression, with their plume-like archings, blos- 
soms of white and carnation, green bayonet-like spikes, weeds shaped 
to the aspect of purple lizards, so that one watched to see if they 
crawled ; great round vegetables, bigger than the African toadstools, 
some crimson, some of cream color, some barred with crimson on a 
yellow ground ; here and there lay fish big and little, of shapes I had 
never before beheld, whose vividness seemed to have lost nothing 
through their being dead. Against the front of the quarter-deck 
was the livid body of a porpoise. There was scarcely a vegetable 
growth but that might have been wrought of steel, for the unyield- 
ingness of it. I kicked at one toadstool-like thing and my foot recoiled 
as though it had smote a little pillar of iron. The picture was made 
the more amazing by the red light of the declining sun, for every 
white gleam had its tinge of ruby, and what was deep of hue glowed 
gloriously rich. The two shafts of masts sparkled like the jewelled 
fingers of a woman. And the deep-sea smell ! The atmosphere was 
charged with an odor of brine and weed of a pungency and quality 
that one felt to be possible only to a revelation from some deepest 
and most secret recess of the deep. The water that had covered the 
main-deck when Dowling and Cutbill had first inspected the craft 
was fast draining away, but the growths there and the shells were 
still soaked, and gave a wet surface for the light of the sun to flash 
up in, and the whole space sparkled with the glory of the rainbow, 
but so much brighter than the brightest rainbow that the eye, after 
lingering, came away weeping with the dazzle. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


376 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE FIRST NIGHT. 

Laura and her sister sat on one of the sailors’ chests that we had 
sent up; Johnson leaned on top of a flour or biscuit barrel that 
stood on end, with his eyes flxed upon the western sea. There was 
still a deal of bright curiosity in Laura’s face as her gaze ran over 
the deck, resting again and again with a sparkle in it upon some 
lovely fibrine form, some lily-like sea-flower, some plant as of green 
marble ; but Lady Monson’s countenance was listless and almost 
empty of expression. Any astonishment she might have felt was 
exhausted. I had scarce time after being swayed inboard to take 
even swift view of this glittering miracle before she asked me, in 
a voice cold and commanding, yet, I am bound to say, of beauty 
too — some of the notes soft almost as a flute’s — “ When will the 
men spread the sail as an awning, Mr. Monson ? They should pre- 
pare for the night. Darkness speedily comes when the sun is gone, 
and we are without lights.” 

“The men have worked very well. Lady Monson,” said I. “They 
will rig up a sail promptly for you, I am sure. I am not in com- 
mand of them, as of course you know, but they have attended 
cheerfully to many of my suggestions. They were your husband’s 
servants, madam.” 

“ And therefore mine^ if you put it so,” she answered, with an 
angry flash of her eyes at me. 

“ I have no doubt,” said I, “ that they will be willing to do any- 
thing you may desire,” and with that I stepped to the side to see 
what they were about, with so strong an aversion in me that I could 
only heartily hope it would never betray me into any more defined 
expression of it than mere manner might convey. 

Laura came to my side as though to observe with me what the 
men were about, and whispered : “ She is very trying, Mr. Monson, 
but bear with her. It will not need a long imprisonment of this 
kind to tame her.” 

“My dearest,” said I, “I have not a word to say against her. 
My quarrel is with yow.” She stared at me. “ I call you Laura. 


376 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


Again and again last night you let me tell you I loved you. By 
your own admission I am your sweetheart, and yet you call me Mr, 
A/bwson.” 

“ Oh, I will call you Charles ; I never thought of it !” she ex- 
claimed, blushing rosy. “ What are the men doing?” she exclaimed, 
peering as though engrossed by the movements of the seamen. 

Cutbill was winding away at the shell-thickened side of the gal- 
leon with an auger; farther aft stood Head similarly employed. 
On a line with my face as I looked down there was a finger-thick 
coil of water spouting out of the vessel’s side, smoking upon the 
rocks and streaming away in a rivulet into holes which it overflowed. 
I explained to Laura the fellows’ employment. 

“They have a notion,” said I, “that there may be treasure con- 
tained in the hold of this old galleon, but before they can search they 
must empty her of the water she is full of. Below there !” I called. 

Finn looked up. “ 1 see that you have bored through her,” said 
1. “ Is her side hard ?” 

“As stone, sir,” he answered. “The shells come away pretty 
easy, but her timber’s growed into regular iron.” 

I asked him how many holes they were going to pierce. He an- 
sw'ered three, that she might be draining handsomely through the 
night. 

“ The sooner we can rig up a sail, Finn, to serve as a shelter, the 
better,” I called down to him. “ When the sun is gone there’ll be 
nothing to see by. The men will be wanting their supper too ; then 
there’s that lump of a porpoise to be got out of the craft, for we 
don’t want to be poisoned as well as shipwrecked, and if daylight 
enough lives after all this,” I continued, “ we ought to beach high 
and dry as much as we can come at to-night that may be washing 
about out of the yacht down there, in case it should come on to 
blow. There’s no moving on this island for the holes in it when 
the darkness falls.” 

“ Ay, ay, sir ! we’ll be with ye in a jiffy,” he answered. 

“ What think you of this marine show ?” I said to Laura. 

“ It is too beautiful to believe real. The mermaids have made a 
garden of this ship. How lovingly, with what exquisite taste have 
they decorated these old decks !” 

“ Happy for us,” I exclaimed, “ that the earthquake should have 
struck her fair and brought her, beflowered and bejewelled as she is, 
to the surface. She is more than an asylum. She compels our at- 
tention, and comes between us and our thoughts and fears.” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEt)Y. s^f 

“Would she float, do you think, if all the water were to be let 
out of hxjr ?” 

“ I would not stake a kiss from you, Laura, on it, but unless she 
is full of petrified ca^*’go and ocean deposit, stones, shells, and so on, 
I don’t see why she shouldn’t swim, though she might float deep.” 

“ Imagine if we could launch her and save our lives by her !” 
cried Laura, clasping her hands ; then changing her voice and cast- 
ing down her eyes, she added: “I must go to Henrietta. She 
watches me intently. She wonders that I can smile, I dare say, 
and I wonder, too, when I think for an instant. Poor Wilfrid ! 
poor Wilfrid ! and my maid, too, and the others who are lying dead 
in that calm sea.” 

She moved away slowly towards her sister. 

I looked about me for a forecastle or main-deck hatch, or any 
signs of an entrance into the silent interior underfoot, but the crust 
of shells and the grass aud plants and vegetation concealed every- 
thing. Both the front of the poop and that of the short raised 
quarter-deck seemed inlaid with shells like a grotto. There was 
doubtless a cabin under the poop, with probably a door off the quar- 
ter-deck, and windows in the cabin front to be come at by beating 
and scraping. It might furnish us with a shelter, but how would it 
show ? What apparel had the sea clothed it with ? An emotion of 
deep awe filled and subdued me when I looked at this ship. I was 
sufficiently well acquainted with old types of craft to guess the 
century to which this vessel had belonged, and even supposing her 
to have been one of the very last of the ships of her particular build 
and shape, yet even then I might make sure that she could not be 
of a less age than a hundred and twenty or thirty years, so that I 
might safely assume that she had been resting in the motionless 
dark green depths of this ocean for above a hundred years. She 
had been a three-masted vessel, but all traces of her mizzen-mast 
had vanished. Her figure made one think of a tub, the sides slight- 
ly pressed in. All about her bows was so thickly incrusted with 
shells that it was impossible to guess the character of the structure 
there. I traced the outline of a beak or projection at the stem-head, 
with a hollow between it and the forepart of the forecastle- deck. 
Little more was to be gathered, for all curves and outlines here were 
thickened into grotesque bigness of round and surface out of their 
original proportions and shape by deposits of shells. Indeed, the 
well in the head was choked with marine vegetation. It was like a 
square of tropic soil loaded with the eager growths of a fat and 


378 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


irresistible vitality, appearances as of guinea-grass, wondrous imita- 
tions of tufts of rushes, beds of pink and feathering mosses, star 
blossoms, thickets of delicate filaments, gorgeous heads in velvet, 
snake-like tradings, sea-roses, dark satin masses of plants of a crim- 
son color, and a hundred other such things, with a subsoil of shells 
whose dyes glanced through the growth in gleams of purple and 
orange and pearl and apple-green, in shapes of mitres, harps, volutes, 
and so forth. 

The men now arrived on board ; three holes had been pierced in 
the galleon’s side, and the water hissed with a refreshing sound on to 
the rocks, intermingled with the faint lipping of the brine that was 
slowly filtering down the sides from the main-deck. Finn’s first di- 
rections were to make an awning of the stay-foresail. The canvas 
had long ago dried out into its original whiteness, so fiery had been 
the heat of the sun and so ardent the temperature of this porous 
island. The sail was easily spread. The stump of the foremast, as 
I have before said, was close into the head ; the sparkling shaft 
served as an upright for the head of the sail to be seized to, and the 
wide foot of it, shelving like the roof of a house, was secured to the 
bows. For that night, at all events, we chose the forecastle to rest 
on, partly because we happened to be on it and our provisions were 
stocked there, and next because the main- deck was still almost 
awash ; and then again there was the great porpoise to get rid of, 
and, in truth, until one could force an entrance into the craft it mat- 
tered little at which end of her one lay. 

The sun still floated about half an hour above the sea. I had 
again and again looked yearningly around the firm, light-blue ocean- 
line, but the azure circle ran flawless to either hand the wedge of 
dark-red gold that floated without a tremble in the dazzle of it un- 
der the sun. 

“ Nothing can show in this here calm, sir,” said Finn, as I brought 
my eyes away from the sea. “ No use expecting of steam, and what’s 
moved by wind ain’t going to hurry itself this weather, sir.” 

“ Let’s get supper,” said I. “ There should be starlight enough 
anon, I think, Finn, to enable us to fill a couple of the empty casks 
with the sweetest of the water that we can find in those boles.” 

“ It can be managed, I dorn’t doubt,” said he. 

“ These here chests, capt’n,” exclaimed Cutbill, indicating the three 
sailors’ boxes that we had hoisted aboard, “ belonged to O’Connor, 
Blake, and Tom Wilkinson. How do we stand as consarns our 
meddling with ’em?” 


AN OCEAN TRACED r. 379 

“IIow d’ye suppose, William?” answered Finn. “Use ’em, man, 
use ’em.” 

“Haiu’t the dead got no rights?” inquired Dowling. 

“ Ay, where there’s law, mate,” responded Finn, with a half-grin 
at me ; “ but there’s no law on the top crust of an airthquake, and I 
allow that whatever may come to us in such a place is ourn, to do 
what we like with.” 

“ Oh, certainly,” I cried ; “ who the deuce wants to discuss the 
subject of law and dead men’s rights here? Overhaul those chests, 
Dowling, and use whatever you want that you may find in them.” 

But one saw the mariner’s prejudices in the way in which the sail- 
ors opened and inspected the contents of the boxes. Had they had 
the handling of a portmanteau of mine, or a trunk belonging to Wil- 
frid, they might not have shown themselves so sensitive ; but these 
were the chests of dead shipmates and messmates — of men they had 
gone aloft with, eaten and drank with, skylarked and enjoyed sailors’ 
pleasure with — and I saw they felt that they were doing a sort of 
violence to forecastle traditions by handling the vanished Jacks’ lit- 
tle property without the sort of right to do so which on board ship 
they would have obtained by a sale of articles at the mast. How- 
ever, they found tobacco and pipes, which went far towards recon- 
ciling them towards Finn’s theory of appropriation. They also met 
with shoes, which were an unspeakable comfort to Dowling and 
Head, who were barefooted, and in torture with every step they 
took from the sharp edges and points of shells. There were rude 
articles of clothing, too, which when dried would give the men a 
shift. 

Well, we got supper ; and when the meal was ended, there being 
yet a little space of daylight in the west, Cutbill, Dowling, and Head 
went to the beach to roll empty water-casks near to the galleon, for 
filling with such water as we could find that was least brackish, and 
to drag clear of the wash of the sea any further casks and cases of 
provisions, wine, and the like which they might chance to come 
across. Johnson continued too feeble to be of use. We had three 
mattresses already as dry as if they had never touched salt-water, 
and one of them I unrolled and made the poor creature lie upon it. 
Then Finn and I went about to prepare for the night while we could 
still see. We stretched the gaff-foresail over the plants and shrubs, 
placed the other two mattresses on one side of it, covering them 
with a portion of the sail-cloth, that the ladies might have clean 
couches, and made a roll of the sail at the head of these mattresses 


S80 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


to serve as a bolster. Tough as the growth of plants on the deck 
was, stiff as steel as I had thought at first, they proved brittle for 
the most part to rough usage, and were speedily broken by our 
tramping and stamping so as to form a sort of mattress under the 
sail; and we were grateful enough when by-and-by we came to lie 
down, for the intervention of these petals and leaves and bulbs be- 
tween our bones and the fiint-like surface of the shells, as barbed 
and jagged as though formed of scissors and thumb-screws. 

The sun sank, and the darkness of the evening swept over the 
sea as swiftly as the shadow of a storm ; but it proved a glorious 
dusk, fine, clear, glittering though dark, the sky like cloth of silver, 
flashful in places, with a view of the Cross of the southern hemi- 
sphere low down, to make one contrast this heat and stillness and 
placid grandeur of constellations with the roaring of Cape Horn 
and the rush of the mountain-high surge, down upon which that 
divinely planted symbol was gazing with trembling eyes. Nothing 
sounded save the plashing of the fountains of water spouting from 
the sides of the galleon, and the soft, cat-like breathing of the black 
line of sea sliding up and down the beach. 

The men had made short work of filling the casks, and leaving 
them where they stood for the night, had clambered afresh to the 
forecastle. It was now too dark to deal with the porpoise, so we 
agreed to let the great thing rest till the morning. I and one or 
two of the others had tinder-boxes, and the means, therefore, of pro- 
curing a light; but we were without candles or lantern. This was a 
hardship in the absence of the moon, that rose so late as to be 
worthless to us, and that would be a new moon presently without 
light; though if I thought of that, it was only to hope in God’s 
name that the rise of the silver paring would find us safe on board 
some ship homeward bound. 

We were unable to distinguish more of one another than the 
vague outlines of our figures, and this only against the stars over 
the crested height of bulwark, for the sail we had spread as an awn- 
ing deepened the gloom ; the growths on the galleon’s decks were 
black, and the shadows lay very thick to the height of the rail, 
where the spangled atmosphere glistened to the edge of the stretched 
sail overhead. The faces of Laura and her sister showed in a dream- 
like glimmer. Finn and I had made a little barricade of casks, cases, 
and the like, between the mattresses on which the ladies were to lie 
and the other part of the forecastle, that they might enjoy the tri- 
fling privacy such an arrangement as this could furnish them with. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


381 


The men formed into a group round about the mattress where John- 
son lay, and lighted the pipes which they had been fortunate enough 
to meet with in the seamen’s chests. As they sucked hard at the 
bowls the glowing tobacco would cast a faint coming and going light 
upon their faces. They subdued their voices out of respect to us, 
and their tones ran along in a half-smothered growl. Much of their 
talk was about the yacht, her loss, their drowned mates, and the like. 
I sat beside Laura, with Lady Monson seated at a little distance from 
her sister, and we often hushed our own whispers to listen to the 
men. Their superstitions were stirred by their situation. This gal- 
leon lay under the stars, a huge, looming mystery, vomited but a 
little while since from the vast depths of yonder black ocean ; and 
now that the night had come, her presence, her aspect, the stillness 
in her of the hushed, unconjecturable, fathomless liquid solitude out 
of which she had been hurled, stirred them to their souls. I could 
tell that by the superstitious character of their talk. They told sto- 
ries of their drowned shipmates’ behavior on the preceding day — 
repeated remarks to which nothing but death could give the slight- 
est significance. Johnson, in a feeble voice from his mattress, said 
that O’Connor, half an hour before the yacht struck, told him that 
he felt very uneasy, and that he’d give all he owned if there were a 
Roman Catholic priest on board that he might confess to him. He 
had led a sinful life, and he had made up his mind to give up the 
sea, and to find work, if he could, in a religious house. “ I thought 
it queer,” added Johnson, in accents so weak that they were painful 
to listen to, “ that a chap like that there O’Connor, who was always 
a-bragging and a-grinning and joking, should grow troubled with his 
conscience all on a sudden. Never knew he was a Papish till he got 
lamenting that there warn’t a priest aboard to confess to.” 

“Mates,” said Finn, whose voice sounded hollow in the darkness, 
“ when Death’s a-coming for a man he’ll often hail him, sometimes a 
good bit afore he arrives. The sperrit has ears, and it’s them that 
hears him, men. O’Connor had heard that hail, but only the secret 
parts in him onderstood it, and they set him a-commiserating of 
himself for having lived sinfully, and started him on craving for 
some chap as he at all events could reckon holy, t’ whom he could 
tell how bad he’d been. Though what good the spinning of a long 
yarn about his hevil ways into an old chap’s ear was going to do 
him. I’m not here to explain.” 

Then Cutbill had something to tell of poor old Jacob Crimp, and 
Jlead of a shipmate whose nam'e I forget. But they rumbled away 


382 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


presently from depressing topics into the more cheerful considera- 
tion of the contents of the galleon’s hold. I sat hand in hand with 
Laura listening. 

“This time yesterday,” said I, “the cabin of the Bride was a 
blaze of light. I see the dinner-table sparkling with glass and silver, 
the rich carpet, the elegant hangings, the lustrous glance of mirrors. 
What is there that makes life so dream-like and unreal as the ocean ? 
The reality of one moment is in a breath made a vision, a memory 
of in the next. The noble fabric of a ship melts like a snow-flake, 
and her people vanish as utterly as though they had been trans- 
formed into spirits.” 

“ Fire will destroy more completely than the ocean !” exclaimed 
Lady Monson. 

“ I think not said I, “ Are leaves ashes, the sea nothing.” 

“ To the eye,” said Lady Monson. 

“ This time to-morrow we may be sailing home, Charles,” said 
Laura. 

“Heaven grant it! Give me once more, Laura, the pavements of 
Piccadilly under ray feet, and I believe there is no man in all Eng- 
land eloquent enough to persuade me that what we have under- 
gone, from the hour of our departure in the Bride to the hour of 
our return in the whatever her name may prove, actually happened.” 

“ But I am real,” she whispered, and I felt her hand tremble in 
mine. 

I pressed her fingers to my lips. Had Lady Monson been out of 
hearing I should have known what to say. I tried to put a cheer- 
ful face upon our perilous and extraordinary position, but I found 
it absolutely impossible to talk of anything else than our chances 
of escape, how long we were to be imprisoned, Wilfrid’s death, the 
destruction of the yacht, incidents of the voyage, and the like. 
I spoke freely of these matters, caring little for Lady Monson’s 
presence. One of the men in talking with the others said some- 
thing about the Eliza Robbins^ and Laura, turning to her sister, ex- 
claimed : 

“ I hope some other ship may take us off. How could you have 
endured such a horrid atmosphere, Henrietta, even for the short 
time you lived on board her ?” 

But to this her ladyship deigned no reply; her silence was omi- 
nous, full of wrath. I can imagine that she abhorred her sister at 
that moment for recalling that ship, and the infamous withering 
memories which the mere utterance of the name carried with it. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


383 


She rose as though to go to the galleon’s side, but sat again 
after the first stride, finding the deck, with its slippery and 
cutting shells, and its tripping interlacery of growths, too ugly a 
platform to traverse in the dark. I had hoped that she would 
break through the husk of sulkiness, haughtiness, selfishness with 
which she had sheathed herself for such comfort as Laura might 
have obtained from some little show in her sister of geniality and 
humanity and sympathetic perception of the dire disaster that had 
befallen us. There was indeed a time that evening when I believed 
her temper was mending ; for during some interval of our listening 
to the conversation of the sailors Laura spoke of Muffin, of the hor- 
ror and fear that had possessed him that night of the severe squall 
when I found him on his knees, his detestation of the sea, his ea- 
gerness to get home, his tricks to terrify Wilfrid into altering the 
yacht’s course, and how the poor wretch’s struggles in that way 
seemed now justified by his being drowned — “ so much so,” added 
Laura, “ that I cannot bear to think of the unfortunate fellow hav- 
ing been whipped by the men.” 

On hearing this. Lady Monson began to ask questions. Appar- 
ently she had been ignorant until now that Muffin was on board the 
Bride. Naturally, she perfectly well remembered him, for the man 
was her husband’s valet some time before she ran off with the colo- 
nel. Her inquiries led to Laura’s telling her of the tricks that Muffin 
had played. The girl’s voice faltered when she spoke of the phos- 
phoric writing on the cabin wall. 

“ What words did Muffin write ?” asked Lady Monson. 

“Oh, Henrietta!” exclaimed Laura, who paused to a tremulous 
sigh, and then added, “ He wrote ’"Return to haby.' ” 

I might have imagined there would be something in this to have 
silenced her ladyship for a while, but apparently there was as little 
virtue in thoughts of her child to touch her as in thoughts of her 
husband. She asked, coldly, but in a sort of dictatorial, pressing 
way, as though eager to scrape over this mention of her child as 
you might crowd sail on your ship to run her into deep water off a 
shoal on which her keel is hung, “ This Muffin was a ventriloquist 
too, you say ?” 

I could guess how grieved and shocked Laura was by the tone of 
her answer. She told her sister how the valet had tricked us with 
his voice, how he had been sent forward into the forecastle to work 
as a sailor, and how the men had punished him on discovering that 
jt was he who terrified them. Several times Lady Monson broke 


384 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


into a short l^augb, of a music so rich and glad that one might easily 
have imagined such notes could proceed only from a very angel of 
a woman. I did not doubt that she sang most ravishingly, and as 
her laughter fell upon my ear in the great shadow of that galleon, 
with the narrow breadth of star-clad sky twinkling with blue and 
green and white-faced orbs, there arose before me the vision of her 
ladyship seated at the piano, with the gallant Colonel Hope-Kennedy 
turning the pages of the music for her, and sweet, true, unsuspicious 
little Laura listening well pleased, and my poor, half-witted cousin 
maybe up in the nursery playing with his baby. 

However, as I have said, this was but a short burst on Lady 
Monson’s part. Laura’s reference to the Eliza Robbins silenced 
her; then Laura and I fell still, her hand in mine, and we listened 
to the men, who were talking of the galleon and arguing over the 
state and contents of her hold. 

“ Well, treasure ain’t perishable anyhow,” said Cutbill. 

“That’s all right,” answered Finn, whose deep-sea voice, I was glad 
to hear, had regained something of its old heartiness. “ Gold’s gold 
whether it’s wan or wan thousand years old. But what I says is, bar 
treasure^ as ye calls it, which ’ee may or may not find — and I hope 
ye may, I’m sure — there ain’t nothin’ worth cornin’ at in the inside 
of a wessel that was founded, quite likely as not, afore George the 
Fust was born.” 

“ But take a cargo of wine,” said Dowling. “ I’ve been told that 
these here galleons was often chock-a-block with wines and sperrits 
of fust-rate quality. The longer ’ee keep wine the more waluable 
it becomes.” 

“ If there’s naught but wine,” said Cutbill, “ better put on a clean 
shirt, mate, and tarn in. There’ll be nothin’ in any cask under these 
here hatches that worn’t have become salt-water after all them 
years. Dorn’t go and smile in your dreams to the notion that 
there’ll be anything fit to drink below.” 

“ How long’s she going to take to drain out, I wonder?” said Head. 

“ I allow she’ll be empty by the time you’ve lifted the hatches,” 
answered Finn ; “ that’ll be a job to test the beef in ’ee, lads.” 

“ Well,” cried Dowling, “ there’ll be no leaving this here island, 
as far as I’m consarned, till the old hooker’s been overhauled. Skin 
me, capt’n, if there mayn’t be enough aboard to set a man up ashore 
as a gentleman for life, and here sits a sailor as wants what he can 
get. I’ve lost all my clothes and a matter of three pun fifteen on 
top of them. Blarst the sea, says I !” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


385 

“ Belay that,” growled Cutbill ; “ recollect who’s a-listening onto 
ye.” 

“ How long’s this island going to remain in the road ?” asked 
Head; “do it always mean to stop here? They’ll have to put a 
light-house upon it.” 

“ Likely as not it’ll go down just as it came up,” answered the 
sick voice of Johnson. 

Laura started. “ That may not be an idle fancy, Charles,” she 
whispered. 

“ Do you think this hulk would float, captain,” I called out, “ if 
the head of this rock were to subside, as Johnson yonder suggests ?” 

“Well, she ain’t buried, sir!” he exclaimed; “there’s nothin’ to 
stop her from remaining behind, that I can see, if she’s buoyant 
enough to swim. If she’s pretty nigh hollow she’ll do it, I allow ; 
for look at the shape of her. As there’s a chance of such a thing, 
then, when she’s done draining we’d better plug the holes we’ve 
made.” 

“I’ll see to that,” said Dowling; “there’s no leaving of her with 
me till I’ve seen what’s inside of her.” 

Here Head delivered a yawn like a howl. 

“ It will be proper to keep a lookout, I suppose, sir ?” said Finn. 

“ Why, yes,” I answered ; “ the night is silent enough now, but 
there may come a breeze of wind at any minute and bring along a 
ship, and one pair of eyes at least must be on the watch.” 

“ There’s nothin’ aboard to make a flare with,” said Cutbill ; “ a 
pity. This here’s a speck of rock to miss a short way off in the 
dark.” 

“ It cannot be helped,” I exclaimed ; “ we have all of us done a 
hard day’s work since dawn, and there is always, in a miserable busi- 
ness of this sort, some job or other that must be kept waiting. 
There’s plenty of stuff on the beach to collect to-morrow. As for 
to-night, a breeze may come, as I have said ; but mark how hotly 
those stars burn. There’ll be but little air stirring, I fear.” 

“ There are four of us to keep a lookout, lads,” said Finn. 

“Five,” I interrupted; “I’m one of you. I’ll stand my watch!” 

“ Very good, sir,” said Finn. “ An hour and a half a piece. 
That’ll bring us fair onto daybreak.” 

“There ain’t no timepiece aboard that’s going,” said Head; 
“ how’s a man to know when his watch’s up ?” 

“ Well, d n it, ye must guess,” growled Cutbill, sulkily and 

sleepily. 

25 


386 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ I’m the least tired of you all, I believe,” said I ; “so with your 
good leave, lads. I’ll keep the first lookout.” 

This was agreed to ; the men knocked the ashes out of their 
pipes, and, with a rough call of “ good-night ” to the ladies and my- 
self, lay down upon the sail. 

They occupied the port side of the galleon’s forecastle, and made 
a little huddle of shadows upon the faintness of the canvas, well 
apart from where the mattresses for the ladies had been placed. In- 
deed, as you will suppose, the gaff-foresail of a schooner of the di- 
mensions of the Bride provided a plentiful area of sail-cloth, and the 
space between the ladies and the sailors could have been consider- 
ably widened yet, had the main-deck been dry enough to use. 

“ Where am I to lie ?” demanded Lady Monson. 

“Your sister, I am sure, will give you choice of either mattress,” 
said I. “These casks and cases will keep you as select as though 
they were the bulkhead of a cabin.” 

“ A dreadful bed!” she cried. “ How long is it possible for these 
horrors to last? I am without a single convenience. There is not 
even a looking-glass. To be chased and hunted down to thisP' she 
added, in a voice under her breath, as though thinking aloud, while 
her respiration was tremulous with passion. 

“ I wish the deck was fit to walk on,” said Laura ; “ I do not feel 
sleepy. I should like to walk up and down with you, Charles.” 

“ It would be worse than pacing a cabbage-field, my dear,” said I. 
■“ You are worn out, but will not know it until your head is pillowed. 
Let me see you comfortable.” 

She at once rose, went to the mattress that was nearest the ves- 
sel’s side, and seated herself upon it, preparatory to stretching her 
limbs. 

“ I should like that bed,” said Lady Monson. “ I suffer terribly 
from the heat. Your blood runs more coldly than mine, Laura.” 

“ Either bed will do for me, Henrietta,” answered the girl, with a 
pleasant little laugh, and she stepped on to the other couch, and 
stretched herself along it. 

I turned the edge of the sail over her feet, saw that the roll of the 
canvas made a comfortable bolster for her, and tenderly bidding her 
good-night, crossed to the other side of the deck, leaving to Lady 
Monson the task of adjusting her own fine figure, and of snugging 
herself according to her fancy. It was about nine o’clock by the 
stars. Now that the men had ceased speaking, and the hush as of 
slumber had descended upon this galleon, I cannot express how 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


387 


_ mysterious and awful was the stillness. You heard nothing but the 
cascading of the water from the holes in the vessel’s side, a soft 
fountain-like hissing sound, and the stealthy, delicate seething of the 
sea slipping up and down the honey-combed beach. The men at a 
little distance away breathed heavily in the deep slumber that had 
swiftly overtaken them. Once J ohnson spoke in a dream, and his dis- 
jointed syllables, amid that deep ocean serenity, grated harshly on 
every nerve. The heavens overhead were blotted out by the stretched 
space of canvas, but aft the line of the galleon rose broken and black 
against the stars, which floated in clouds of silver in the velvet dusk 
of the sky. The silence seemed like some material thing, creeping, 
as though it were an atmosphere, to 'this central speck of rock, out 
of the remote glistening reaches of the huge circle of the horizon. 

But deeper than any silence that could reign between the surface 
of the earth and the stars was the stillness of the bottom of the 
ocean that had risen with this galleon, the dumbness which fllled the 
blackness of her stonifled interior. Imagination grew active in me 
as I sent my sleepless eye over the sombre, mysterious loom of the 
ship to where the narrow deck of the poop went in a gentle accliv- 
ity, cone-shaped, to the luminaries which glanced over the short line 
of her taffrail like the gaze of the spectres of her crew, who would 
presently be noiselessly creeping over the sides. I figured, and in- 
deed beheld, the ship in the days of her glory, her sides a bright 
yellow, the grim lips of little ordnance grinning through port-holes, 
the flash of brass swivel-guns upon the line of her poop and quarter- 
deck rail, her canvas spreading on high — round, spacious, flowing, and 
of a lily-white brightness, enriched by flaring pennants, many ells in 
length, with figures aft and forward — Spanish ladies in gay and 
radiant attire, their black eyes shining, their long veils floating on 
the tropic breeze ; grave senors in plumed hats, rich cloaks half drap- 
ing'the sheaths of jewel-hilted swords ; a priest or two, shaven, sallow, 
with a bead-like pupil of the eye in the corner of the sockets ; the 
pilot and the captain pacing yonder deck together, and where I was 
standing, crowds of quaintly apparelled mariners with long hair and 
chocolate cheeks, yet with roughest voices rendered melodious by 
utterance of the majestic dialects of their country — and then I 
thought of her resting, as I now beheld her, motionless in the tide- 
less, dark-green waters at the bottom of the ocean ! — figures of her 
people, lying, sitting, standing round about her in the attitudes they 
were drowned in, preserved from decay by the petrifying stagnation 
of the currentless dark brine. 


388 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


It was now that I was alone, the deep breathing of sleepers rising 
from the deck near me, the eyes of my mind quickened by high- 
strung imagination into perception, vivid as actuality itself, of the 
visions of this galleon in her sunlit heyday and then in her glory of 
shells and plants in the unimaginable hush of the fathomless void 
from which she had emerged, that I fell to thinking gravely and 
wonderingly over what Johnson, the sick sailor, had said touching 
the possibility of this island’s sudden disappearance. Of such vol- 
canic upheavals as this I had read and heard again and again. Some- 
times the land thus created stood for years ; sometimes it vanished 
within a few hours of its formation. 

I particularly recollected a story that I had met with in the Naval 
Chronicle; how two ships were in company off a height of land 
rising sixty feet above the level of the sea, that was uncharted and 
unknown to the captains of the vessels, though one of them had been 
in those waters a few weeks before, and both men were intimately 
well acquainted with the navigation of that tract of ocean ; how after 
masters and crews had been staring, lost in wonder at the tall, pale, 
sterile, sugar-loaf acclivity, one of the commanders sent a boat over 
in charge of his mate, that he might land and return with a report ; 
when, while the boat was within a musket-shot of the island, the 
land sank softly but swiftly, without noise, and with so small a com- 
motion of the sea following the disappearance of the loftiest point 
of peak that the darkening of the surface of the ocean with ripples 
there seemed as no more than the shadow of the current. 

This and like yarns ran in my head, and, indeed, the more I 
thought of it, the more I seemed to fancy that this head of pumice 
upon which the galleon was seated was of the right sort to crumble 
down flat all in a minute. Why, think of the height of it ! Since 
those times I believe the plummet has sounded the depths of that 
part of the equinoctial waters, but in those days the ocean there was 
held unsearchable. Was it all lava that had been spewed up — some 
mountain of volcanic vomit, hardened by the brine into an altitude 
of many thousands of feet from ooze to summit, and hollow as a 
drum, too, with a mere film of crust on top ? O God ! I mused, 
wrung from head to foot with a shudder; think of this crust yielding, 
letting the galleon sink miles down the gigantic shaft of porous stuff, 
the walls on top yet standing above the water-line, high enough to 
prevent the sea from rolling into the titanic funnel ! Gracious love ! 
figure our being alive when we got to the bottom, and looking up at 
the mere star of daylight that stared down upon us from the vast 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


389 


distance as the galleon grounded on a bottom deeper than the seat of 
the hell of the mediaeval terrorists ! 

I shook my head ; such a fancy was like to drive me mad — with 
the sort of possibility of it, too, in its way. Could I have but stirred 
my stumps I might have been able to walk off something of my 
mood of horror, but every pace along that deck was like wading and 
floundering. I went to the high forecastle-rail and leaned my arms 
upon it and looked into the night, and presently the beauty and the 
serenity and the wide mystery of the dark ocean brimming to the 
wheeling stars worked in me with the influence of a benediction ; 
my pulse slackened and I grew calm. What could the worst that 
befell us signify but death ? I reflected ; and I thought of my cousin 
sleeping in the black void yonder. The splashing of the water 
streaming from the holes in the side sounded refreshingly upon the 
ears. There was a suggestion as of caressing in the tender noise of 
the dark fingers of the sea blindly and softly pawing the incline of 
the beach. The atmosphere was hot, but the edge of its fever was 
blunted by the dew. 

Thus passed the time, and when I thought my hour and a half 
had gone I stepped quietly over to Finn and shook him, and with a 
sailor’s promptitude he sprang to his feet, understanding, dead as 
his slumber had been, our situation and arrangements the instant he 
opened his eyes. My mind was full, nor was I yet sleepy, and I 
could have talked long with him on the thoughts which had visited 
me. But to what purpose ? There was nothing that he could have 
suggested. Like others in desperate straits, our business was to wait 
and hope and help ourselves as best we could. I took a peep at 
Laura before lying down ; she lay motionless, sound asleep, breath- 
ing regularly. Lady Monson stirred as I was in the act of withdraw- 
ing, and laughed low and so oddly that I knew it was a dreamer’s 
mirth. 


390 


AN OCEAN TEAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XXXIL 

THE galleon’s HOLD. 

I WOKE from a deep sleep, and opened my eyes against the glare 
of the risen sun. Death must be like such sleep as that, thought I. 
I sat up and met Laura’s gaze fixed upon me. She was seated on a 
seaman’s chest lightly smoothing her hair, and the jewels on her 
fingers sparkled like dew-drops on the golden fall of her tresses. 
She looked the better for tbe night’s rest, her complexion fresher, 
her eyes freed of the delicate haziness that had yesterday somewhat 
dimmed their rich violet sparkles ; the pale greenish shadow under 
them, too, was gone. A little past her stood Lady Monson gazing 
seaward under the shelter of her hand. Her shape made a very noble 
figure of a woman against the blue brilliance of atmosphere between 
the edge of the spread sail and the forecastle-rail ; the cap she wore 
I supposed she had found in her sister’s box. Her hair was extraor- 
dinarily thick and long and of a lustreless black, and looked a very 
thunder-cloud upon her back, as I have before said; it put a wild 
and almost savage spirit into her beauty, which this slender head- 
gear of lace or whatnot somewhat qualified; in fact, she looked a 
civilized woman with that cap on, but her cheeks were so white as 
to be painful to see. The full life of her seemed to have entered her 
eyes ; her breast rose and fell slowly, as if her heart beat with labor ; 
yet, slow as every movement in her was, whether in the turn of her 
head, the droop of her arm, the lifting of her hand, it was in ex- 
quisite correspondence with the suggestion of cold dignity and 
haughty indifference you seemed to find in her form and carriage. 

I had a short chat with Laura, and found she had rested well. 
The men were off the galleon. 

“ They have gone to the wreck, I suppose,” said I, scarce able to 
see that way, however, for the blinding dazzle of sunshine that made 
the leagues of eastern ocean as insupportabie to the gaze as the lumi- 
nary itself. 

“ The poor man Johnson is dead !” she exclaimed. 

“ Ah ! I feared it. I believed I could hear death in his voice jvben 
he spoke in his sleep last night.” 

“ Cutbill and Head/’ she continued — for she was now well acquaint- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


391 


cd with the names of the men — “ have carried his body to bury it in 
the sea, past that slope there.” 

I sat silent a little. I had all along secretly expected that the man 
would die, yet the news that he was dead strangely affected me. It 
might be because he had been among the saved, and it seemed hard 
and cruel that he should perish after having come off with his life out 
of a conflict that had destroyed robuster men. Then, again, there 
was the loneliness of his death, expiring, perhaps, after vainly strug- 
gling to make some whispered wants audible to our sleeping ears or 
to the nodding flgure standing at a distance from him on the lookout. 

I sent a look round the sea, compassing the blue line as fully as 
the blaze would permit. The calm was as dead as it had been 
throughout the night. In the west the heads of a few clouds of the 
burning hue of polished brass showed with a stare out of a dimness 
over the sea there. There was bitter loathing of all this deadness 
and tranquillity in me as I stepped to the side for a sight of Finn 
down on the beach. What phantom of chance was there for us un- 
less a breeze blew ? Dowling was at work below, winding with his 
auger into the galleon’s side. He had made two further holes to 
starboard, and was now piercing a third. 

“ There ain’t anything like the first weight of water in her now, 
sir,” he sung out ; “ see how languid these here spurts are as com- 
pared to yesterday’s spouting.” 

I overhauled the whip that was rove at the end of the derrick, 
secured the end, and went down hand over hand. My skin felt 
parched and feverish and thirsty for a dip. “ I am off for a plunge,” 
I called to Laura, who came to the side to look at me as I slipped 
down. I found Finn exploring among the wreckage on the shore ; 
Cutbill and Head were then coming round from the other side of 
the island, their heads hung and their feet taking the pumice-rocks 
with funeral strides. 

“ How are you, Finn ?” I called to him. 

“Thank God, I feel myself again. The pain in my side’s gone, 
and my breath comes easy. Poor Johnson’s dead.” 

“ I know.” 

“Something while he was in the water struck agin his heart. 
But arter all, sir, what does it matter, since a man can die but once, 
where he takes his header from ?” 

“ We must suffer nothing to depress us, Finn. Good-morning, 
Cutbill. How fire you, Head ? A sad job for sunrise to turn you 
to, men,” 


392 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ Poor Sammy !” exclaimed Cutbill, in a deep sea growl, full of 
emotion and U slight lift of his face, smothered in whiskers, to the 
sky. “ He’s been hailed for the last time. He’s gone where there’s 
no more taming out.” 

“ He’s lived hard, worked hard, and died hard,” said Head, bring- 
ing his eyes in a squint to my face, “ and it would be hard if he’s 
gone to hell arter all.” 

“ Stow all sarmons !” cried Finn ; “ let’s see now if there’s anything 
come ashore worth having.” 

I left them wading and searching, and trudging to the other side of 
the island, stripped, and advanced into the water to the height of my 
hips, not daring to venture farther for fear of sharks. The plunge 
made a new man of me, and when I returned, it was with a good ap- 
petite and a hearty disposition to help in any sort of work that might 
advantage us. The men met with a barrel of pork and another case of 
potted meats. The water was as pure and bright as glass over the 
shelving beach, and what lay near to on the fluctuating sulphur-col- 
ored bottom was as plain as though viewed through air. We were 
thus enabled to rescue much of what in thick water we should never 
have seen — among other matters, three cases of champagne, a case 
of bottled beer, a small cask of brandy, and one or two other articles 
which had formed a portion of the forecastle stores, not to mention 
many armfuls of stuff for making flares with, should a vessel show 
in the night. Of the cabin provisions we recovered but little, owing 
to their having been stowed aft for the most part, where the yacht 
had been literally torn to pieces. The bows of the vessel stood gaunt 
and bare in the light-blue water. I saw poor Finn gazing at the re- 
mains until his eyes moistened, and he broke away with a deep sigh 
and a dreary look at me. I never could have imagined that anything 
inanimate could have appealed so humanly as that mutilated frag- 
ment of a fabric that but a little while before shone as sweet and 
stately a figure upon the sea as any structure of her size that ever 
lifted a snow-white spire to the sky. 

It was after ten o’clock, as was to be guessed by the sun’s height, 
when we started to break into the interior of the galleon. We had 
worked hard since sunrise; filled another brace of empty casks 
which we had found on the beach with water out of the holes in 
the rocks; hoisted these casks aboard along with the other provis- 
ions and spirits we had fallen in with ; got our breakfast ; then, 
with prodigious labor and difficulty, had turned the great dead por- 
poise out of the ship by clapping tackles to it and prizing it up with 


AN OCEAN* TRAGEDY. 


393 


a small studding-sail boom that served as a handspike. The main-deck 
was now as dry as the poop or forecastle. Lady Monson remained 
seated under the awning. Laura, on the other hand, with a hand- 
kerchief tied over her head, reckless of her complexion, wandered 
like a child about the decks, examining the many gorgeous sea- 
plants, bending her fair face to an iridescent cluster of shells, gazing 
with rounded, eyes, and an expression of charming wonder, at some 
flat, flint-colored, snake-like creeper as if she believed it lived. The 
wondrous marine parterre seemed the richer for the presence and 
movements of the lustrous-haired girl, as a rose appears to glow into 
darker and finer beauty when lifted to some lovely face. 

We resolved to attack the cabin entrance first, but it was hard to 
tell where the door lay, whether in the front of the poop or of the 
quarter-deck. There were steps leading from one deck to the other 
on either hand close against the bulwarks, as you easily guessed by 
the incline and appearance of the thick moulding of shells upon 
them. Cutbill was for attacking the quarter-deck front, but Finn 
agreed with me that the state cabin would lie under the poop, and 
that the door to it, therefore, would be somewhere in the front of 
that deck. To this part, then, we carried the tool-chest. There 
were five of us ; every man seized an implement, and to it we fell, 
scraping, hammering, chipping, prizing. Dowling and Head worked 
as though they had already caught sight of the glitter of precious 
metal within. Some of the shelly adhesions were hard as rock, 
some broke away easily in lumps, like bricks from a house that is 
being demolished ; but the thickness was staggering ; it was a growth 
of layer upon layer, and every man had a great mound of splintered 
or concreted shells at his feet when the front at which we worked 
was still heavily coated. There seemed a sort of sacrilege in the 
destruction of so much beauty. Again and again I would pause to 
admire a shape of exquisite grace, a form of glorious hue, before 
striking ; and then, it seemed to me as I toiled, many fancies crowd- 
ing into my head, now that I looked close into this glorious incrus- 
tation, that it was impossible this galleon could have been sunk to 
the depth I had first imagined. Surely no such rainbow-like life as 
I now witnessed existed in the black and tideless depths, countless 
fathoms out of reach of the longest and fiercest lance of light the 
sun could dart. No, she had probably settled down on some hill-top 
within measurable distance of the surface, on some submarine vol- 
canic eminence, where the vitality of the deep was all about her. 

We came to wood-work at last, or what had been wood. It was. 


394 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


fossilized timber, and the blows of a hammer rang upon it as though 
an anvil was struck. 

“ Here’s where the door is,” roared Cutbill. 

We saw the line of what was manifestly a door-way, showing in 
a space clear of shells, and in a moment we all fell upon it, and 
presently laid it bare — a little door about^five feet high close against 
the starboard heap of shells which buried the poop-ladddr there. 

“Don’t smash it if ’ee can help it,” called out Finn. 

But it would not yield to any sort of coaxing short of Cutbill’s 
thunderous hammer, which he swung with such Herculean muscle 
that after half a dozen blows the door went to pieces and tumbled 
down with a clatter, as of the fragments of iron. It was pitch-dark 
inside, of course, but for that we were prepared. Dowling and Head 
were for thrusting in at once. 

“Back!” bawled Finn. “What sort of air for breathing d’ye 
think this is after being bottled up afore your great grandmothers 
was born.” 

Yet, for my part, though I stood close, I tasted nothing foul. The 
first breath of the black atmosphere came out with a wintry edge 
of ice, and the chill of it went sifting into the sultry daylight of the 
open air, till I saw Laura, who stood some little distance away watch- 
ing us, recoil from the contact of it. 

“There’s nothing to be done in there without a light of some 
kind,” said I. “ How was this cabin illuminated ? From the deck, 
I presume, as well as by port-holes.” 

“ Let me go and see, sir,” said Finn. 

The gang of us, armed with tools, crawled up the line of shells 
against the door, and gained the poop-deck. There was a coffin- 
shaped heap of glittering incrustation close to where the mizzen- 
mast had probably stood; the form of it indicated a buried sky- 
light. We fell upon it, and after we had chipped and hammered 
for some quarter of an hour the mass of it broke away, and went 
thundering into the cabin below. The sweep of cold air that rose 
drove us back. 

“ Casements of this skylight were blown out, I reckon, when she 
settled,” said Finn ; “ ’stonishing how them shells should have filled 
up the cavity without anything to settle on.” 

“Weeds and plants stretched themselves across, maybe,” said I, 
“ and made a platform for them.” 

We returned to the quarter-deck, but waited a while before enter- 
ing the cabin, that the atmosphere might have time to sweeten. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


395 


Thickly as the upper works of the vessel were coated, I suspected 
that they would be sieve-like in some places, from the circumstance 
of our finding no water in the cabin. I put my head into the door, 
fetched a breath, and finding nothing noxious in the atmosphere, ex- 
claimed, “We may enter now with safety, I believe.” The interior 
lay very clearly revealed. A sunbeam shone through the deck aper- 
ture, and the cold, drowned, amazing interior lay bathed in a deli- 
cate silver haze of the morning light. I felt a deeper awe as I stood 
looking about me than any vault in which the dead had been lying 
for centuries could have inspired. The hue of the walls was that of 
ashes. It was the ancient living-room of the ship, and went the 
whole width of her, and in length ran from the front of the deck 
through which we had broken our way to the moulding of the cas- 
tle-like, pink-shaped stern, the planks sloping with a considerable 
spring or rise. It had .been a spacious sea - chamber in its day. 
There were here and there incrustations in patches of limpet-like 
shells upon the sides and upper deck; underfoot was a deal of 
sand with dead weeds, no hint of the vegetation that showed with- 
out. There were fragments of wreckage here and there which I 
took to be the remains of the furniture of the place ; it had mostly 
washed aft, as though the vessel had settled by the stern. 

Up in a corner on the port side, that lay somewhat darksome on 
a line with the door, were a couple of skeletons with their arms 
round each other’s neck. They seemed to stand erect, but in fact 
they rested with a slight inclination against the scantling of the 
cabin front. Some slender remains of apparel clung to the ribs and 
shoulder-bones, and a small scattering of like fragments lay at their 
feet, as though shaken to the deck with the jarring of the fabric by 
the volcanic stroke that had uphove her. 

“ Hearts my life !” murmured Finn. “ What a hobject to come 
across ! Why, they’ve been mm 

“A man and a woman, more like,” said Cutbill, “ a-taking a last 
farewell as the ship goes down.” 

“ May I come in, Charles ?” exclaimed Laura, putting her head 
into the door. 

She advanced as she spoke, but her eye instantly caught the em- 
bracing skeletons. She stopped dead and recoiled, and stood staring 
as if fascinated. 

“ Not the fittest sight in the world for you, Laura,” said I, taking 
her hand to lead her forth. 

“ They were living beings once, Charles,” she exclaimed, drawing 


396 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


a deep breath, and slightly resisting my gentle drawing of her to 
the door. 

“Ay, red hearts beat in them, passions thrilled through them, 
and love would still seem with them. What were they ? Husband 
and wife — father and daughter — or sweethearts going to their grave 
in an embrace?” 

She shuddered, and continued to gaze. Ah, my God ! the irony 
of those skeletons’ posture — the grin of each skull, as though in 
mirthless derision of the endearing, caressing grasp of the long and 
stirless arms ! 

“ Oh, Charles !” exclaimed Laura, in a whisper of awe and grief, 
“is love no more than that?'" 

“ Yes, love is more than that,” I answered, softly, conducting her, 
now no longer reluctant, to the door ; “ there is a noble saying, 
‘ Where we are, death is not ; where death is, we are not.’ Death 
is yonder, and so love is not. But that love lives, horrible as the 
symbol of it is — it lives, let us believe ; and where it is death is not. 
Would Lady Monson like to view this sight ?” 

“ It is a moral to break her heart,” she answered ; “ she would not 
come.” 

She went towards her sister thoughtfully. 

“ There’s nothing here, men,” said I, returning. 

“ Them poor covies ’ll frighten the ladies,” said Dowling, eying 
the skeletons, with his head on one side ; “ better turn ’em out of 
this.” 

“ Let them rest,” said 1. “ The ladies will not choose this cabin 
now to lie in.” 

“ If them bones, which are a-hugging one another so fondly to- 
day, could talk,” said Cutbill, “ what a yarn they’d spin !” 

“ Pooh !” said I, “ I’ve had enough of this cabin and with that 
I walked right out. 

The men followed. It was broiling hot, the sea a vast white gleam 
tremorlessly circling the island, and steeping like quicksilver into 
the leagues of faint sky; the bronzed brows of the clouds in the 
west still burned, looming bigger. I prayed Heaven there might 
be wind there. Laura had told her sister of our discovery in the 
cabin, and when, while we sat making a bit of a mid-day meal, my 
sweet girl, in a musing, tender way, talked of this shipwreck of a 
century and a half old as though she would presently speak of that 
cabin memorial of it so ghastly, and yet so touching. Lady Monson 
imperiously silenced her. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


397 


“ Our position is one of horror !” she exclaimed ; “ do not aggra- 
vate it.” 

The men, defying the heat, went to work when they had done 
eating, to search for the main -hatch, that they might explore the 
hold. I observed that Finn labored with vigor. In short, the four 
of them had convinced themselves that there was grand purchase 
to come at inside this ancient galleon, and they thirsted for a view 
of the contents of her. I was without their power of sustained la- 
bor, was enfeebled by the tingling and roasting of the atmosphere ; 
my sight was pained, too, by the fierce glare on the unsheltered 
decks; so I plainly told them that I could help them no more for 
the present, and with that threw myself down on the sail beside the 
chest on which Laura was seated, and talked with her, and some- 
times with Lady Monson, though the latter’s manner continued as 
uninviting as can well be imagined. 

However, some hope was excited in me by the spectacle of the 
slowly growing brass-bright brows of cloud in the west. There was 
a look of thunder in the rounds of their massive folds, and in any 
case they promised some sort of change of weather, while they 
soothed the eye by the break they made in the dizzy, winding hori- 
zon, and the bald and dazzling stare of the wide heavens brimming 
with light which seemed rather to rise from the white metallic mir- 
ror of the breathless sea than to gush from the sun that hung almost 
directly over our heads. 

It took the men three hours to find and clear the hatch and then 
uproot it. The square of it then lay dark in the deck, and Laura 
and I went to peer down into it along with the others, who leaned 
over it with pale or purple faces. The daylight shone full down, and 
disclosed what at the first glance seemed no more to me than masses 
of rugged, capriciously heaped piles of shells, with the black gleam 
of water between, and much delicate festooning of sea-weed droop- 
ing from the upper deck and from the side, suggesting a sort of 
gorgeous arras, with the intermingling of red and green and gray. 
One could not see far fore or aft, owing to the intervention of the 
edges of the hatch, but what little of the interior was visible dis- 
covered a vegetable growth as astonishing as that which glorified 
the decks ; huge fans, plants exactly resembling the human hand, 
as though some Titan had fallen prone with lifted arms, bunches of 
crimson fibre, with other plants indescribable in shape and color, of a 
prodigious variety, though the growths were mainly from the ceiling, 
or upon the bends where the sides of the galleon rounded to her keel. 


398 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ All them heaps’ll signify cargo,” said Dowling. 

“ No doubt,” said I ; “ but how is it to be got at ?” 

“Mr. Monson, sir,” exclaimed Finn, “you’re a scholar, and will 
know more about the likes of such craft as this than us plain sailor- 
men. What does your honor think? Was this vessel a plate ship?” 

“ I wish I could tell you all you want to know,” I replied. “ She 
was unquestionably a galleon in her day, and a great vessel as ton- 
nage then went — seven hundred tons ; what d’ye think, Finn ?” 

“ Every ounce of it, sir. Look at her beam.” 

Well, here is a ship that was bound to or from some South 
Atnerican port. She’s too far afield for considerations of the Span- 
ish main and the towns of the Panama coast. Was treasure carried 
to or from the cities of the eastern American seaboard? I cannot 
say. But if she was from round the Horn — which I don’t think 
likely, for the Manilla galleons clung to the Pacific, and transship- 
ments came to old Spain by way of the Cape — then I should say 
there may be treasure aboard of her.” 

Well, I’m going to overhaul her, if I’m here for a twelvemonth !” 
cried Dowling. 

“ So says I !” exclaimed Head. 

“ Would she float, I wonder,” said Cutbill, “when the water’s gone 
out of her?” 

“ I’ll offer no opinion on that,” said I, laughing. “ I hope I may 
not be on board should it come to a trial.” 

“ If she was full up with cargo it must have wasted a vast,” re- 
marked Head. 

“ Where did these here Spaniards keep their bullion ?” exclaimed 
Finn, stroking down his long cheek-bones. 

“ Why, down aft under the capt’n’s cabin. They was leary old 
chaps ; they wouldn’t stow it forrads or amidships,” exclaimed Cut- 
bill. 

“ All the water will have run out of her by to-morrow morning, I 
allow,” said Finn ; “ but there’s no sarching of her with it up over a 
man’s head.” 

“ I wish this deck were sheltered,” said Laura. “ What a glori- 
ous scene ! I could look at it for hours. But the sun pains me.” 

I took her hand, and we returned together to the shadow of the 
sail spread over the forecastle, leaving the four men talking and 
arguing and staring down, dodging with their heads to send greedy 
looks into the gloom past the hatch. But there was nothing to be 
done till the ship was clear of water, as Finn had said, and presently 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


399 


they came forward and lighted their pipes, seating themselves at a 
respectful distance from us ; but all their talk ran upon the treasure 
they were likely to meet with, and though I would sometimes catch 
a half-look from Finn, as though my presence somewhat subdued 
him, yet I saw that at heart he was as hot and as full of expectation 
as the others. 

The clouds had risen a third of the way to the zenith when the 
sun struck his fiery orb into them and disappeared, turning them as 
black as thunder against the heaven of blood-red light that lingered 
long in waving folds as though the atmosphere were incandescent. 
Then the lightning showed in zigzag lines of sparkling violet, thougji 
all remained hushed, while the sea went spreading in a sheet of glass 
that melted out of its crimson dye into a whitish blue in the clear 
east. 

“ Should it come on to blow,” said I to Laura, “ this sail over our 
heads will yield us no shelter. We shall have to betake ourselves 
to the cabin.” 

“ With two skeletons in it,” said Lady Monson, sarcastically. 

“We shall not see them,” I answered, “and skeletons cannot hurt 
us.” 

“ We shall see them by the lightning,” exclaimed Laura, “ and 
they will be very dreadful !” 

“ I would rather remain in the storm,” said Lady Monson. 

“ But if those figures are carried out of the cabin,” said I, “ you 
will not object to take shelter in it?” 

“ I w’ould rather die,” she said, “ than enter that part of this hor- 
rid ship.” 

“ Well,” said I, mildly, “ we will first see what is going to happen.” 

At half-past five, or thereabouts, we got what the sailors would 
have called our supper. There was indeed plenty to eat, enough to 
last us some weeks, with husbandry. All the cashed meat, it is 
true, was uncooked, but enough galley utensils had come ashore — a 
big kettle, I remember, and a couple of saucepans — to enable us to 
boil our pork and beef when our stock of preserved food should 
be exhausted. Our supply of water, however, justified uneasiness. 
One’s thirst was incessant under skies of brass, and on an island 
whose crust was as hot as the shell of a newly boiled egg. But 
then, to be sure, the surface was honey-combed with wells. In a 
very short time the salt-water would have dried out of the deepest 
of them, and we might hope that the next thunder-shower would 
yield us drink enough to last out this intolerable imprisonment. 


400 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


But when was it to end ? I stood up to take a view of the sea ; 
the galleon’s forecastle probably showed a height of between thirty 
and forty feet above the water-line, and one seemed to command a 
wide prospect of ocean ; but not a gleam of the size of a tip of 
feather met the eye the whole wide, stagnant sweep around. The 
sun was now low in the heart of the dark masses of vapor in the 
west, a sickly purple shadow underhung the clouds upon the sea, 
and glanced back with an eye of fire to every lightning dart that 
fiashed from above. Overhead the sky had fainted into a sickly 
hectic, and it was an ugly, sallow sort of green down in the east, 
‘with a large star there trembling mistily. 

“ It’s coming on a black, thundering night,” I heard Cutbill say, 
as he stood up to send a look into the west, with the inverted bowl 
of a sooty pipe showing past his whisker, and a large sweat-drop 
glancing like, a jewel at the end of his nose. 

“ There’ll be wind there !” exclaimed Finn. 

“ What signs do you find to read ?” said I. 

“ Well, your honor, there’s a haze of rain, if ye look at the foot 
of that smother down there,” he answered, pointing with the sharp 
of his hand ; “ and the verse concerning manifestations of that sort 
is gospel truth : 

“ ‘ When the rain’s before the wind, 

Then your top-s’l halyards mind.’” 

“ If it’s coming on a breeze of wind,” said Dowling, who, like the 
others, felt himself privileged by stress of shipwreck to join freely 
in any conversation that was going forward, “ this here sail ’ll blow 
away and we shall lose it ” — meaning the jib that we had stretched 
as an awning. 

“ Pity to lose it,” exclaimed Finn ; “ shall we take it in, sir, while 
there’s light?” 

“ No !” cried Lady Monson, who probably imagined that if this 
shelter went she would be driven to the cabin. 

Finn knuckled his forehead to her. 

“ I’m afraid. Lady Monson,” said I, “ that this sail will be carried 
away by the first puff, and it will be carried into the sea.” 

“ If you remove it you leave us without shelter,” she answered. 

“ But we shall be without shelter if the wind removes it,” said 1. 

“Then it cannot be helped,” she exclaimed, looking at me as 
though she found me irritating. 

“ We shall have to carry this sail aft anyway,” said I, pointing to 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


401 


the one that was spread upon the forecastle. “ The first gust of wet 
will soak it through, and we shall not be able to use it until it is 
dry for fear of rheumatic fever.” 

“ To what part do you wish it carried ?” said Laura. 

“To the only sheltered spot the ship supplies, the cabin,” I an- 
swered. 

“You do not intend that we should sleep there, Charles?” she 
cried. 

“We needn’t sleep, my dearest, we can keep wide-awake. But 
will it not be madness to expose one’s self to a violent storm merely 
because — ” 

“ Oh, horror 1” interrupted Lady Monson ; “ I shall remain here 
though the clouds rain burning sulphur.” 

“ Finn,” said I, “ when you have smoked your pipe out, fall to 
with’ the others, will you, to get this sail into the cabin, and turn 
the two silent figures there out of it ?” 

“ Where are they to go, sir ?” , 

“ Oh, lower them into the hold for to-night. Lady Monson, is 
your mattress to be left here ?” 

“ Certainly,” she answered, indignantly ; “ how am I to rest with- 
out a mattress ?” 

“Only one mattress, then, is to be carried aft, Finn,” said 1. 
“ Now bear a hand, like good sailor-men, while there’s daylight. We 
shall have that blackness yonder bursting down upon us in a squall, 
then it will be thick as pitch, with decks like a surface of trawlers’ 
nets to wade through, and yonder main-hatch at hand grinning like 
a man-trap.” 

“Come, lads,” cried Finn. 

The four of them sprang to their feet, rolled up the sail and 
hauled it aft, singing out a shipboard chorus as they dragged. 
When they had got it into the cabin, they cut off a big stretch of 
it which they spread over the open skylight, and secured by weight- 
ing the corners heavily with the masses of shell which had been 
chipped away to come at the aperture. Then Head arrived for Lau- 
ra’s mattress, flung it over his back, and staggered with it, grinning, 
along to the quarter-deck. Lady Monson looked on, cold, white, but 
with anger brilliant in her great black eyes. 

“ I believed that these men were still my servants to command,” 
she exclaimed. 

“I am sure they will obey any order your ladyship may give 
them,” said 1. 

26 


402 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ They have no right to denude this part of the deck, since it is 
my intention to remain here,” she exclaimed, drawing her fine figure 
haughtily erect, and surveying me with dislike and temper. 

“ Henrietta, dear,” broke in the soft voice of Laura, “ Mr. Monson 
instructs them in the interests of us all. See how bright the light- 
ning is. You will not be able to remain here. How frightful was 
the rain when the Bride was wrecked !” 

“ The strongest man had to turn his back to the wind,” said I. 

Lady Monson, whose eyes had glanced aft at that moment, jumped 
from the chest on which she was seated, and went in a headlong way 
to the bulwark as though she meant to leap overhead. I could not 
understand this sudden wild disorder in her till I saw Cutbill, Dow- 
ling, and Head, with Finn superintending the business, bearing the 
pair of embracing skeletons to the main-hatch. Laura started and 
looked away ; but there was no absurd demonstration of horror in 
her. A ghastly sight, indeed, the skeleton twain made, dreadfuller 
objects to behold in the wild, flushed, stormy light of the moment 
than they had appeared in their twilighted corner of the cabin. The 
long bones of arms clung like magnets to the skeleton necks, fossil- 
ised, I suppose, by the action of the sea into that posture ; and thus 
grimly embracing, while they looked with death’s dreadful grin over 
each other’s shoulder, they were lowered by the sailors down the. 
main-hatch. 

“ Mr. Monson, sir,” suddenly bawled Finn, “ will you and the la- 
dies step this way and see the beautifullest sight mortal eyes ever 
beheld?” 

“ Where is it, Finn ?” I called back to him. 

“ In the hold, sir,” he answered. 

“ He cannot mean the skeletons !” exclaimed Laura. 

“ Will you come. Lady Monson ?” I asked. 

“ Certainly not,” she replied from the bulwark, where she stood 
staring seaward and answering without turning her head. 

Laura seemed a little reluctant. “ Come, my love,” I whispered ; 
“ is not a beautiful sight, even according Jio Finn’s theory of beauty, 
worth seeing?” 

I took her hand, and together we proceeded to the open hatch. 

On peeping down, my first instinctive movement was one of re- 
coil. I protest I believed the interior of the hull to be on fire. The 
whole scene was lighted up by crawling fluctuations, creepings, and 
blinkings of vivid phosphoric flame. It might be that the atmos- 
phere of this storm-laden evening was heavily charged with electric- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


403 


ity ; yet since the gloom had drawn down I had often cast ray eyes 
upon the sea in the direction where the shadow of the tempest lay, 
and where the water brimmed darkly to the slope of the beach, and 
therefore had the ocean been phosphorescent even to a small extent 
» I should have observed it ;• yet no further signs of fire were apparent 
than a thin dim edging of wire-drawn, greenish light, flickering on 
the lip of the brine as it stealthily, almost imperceptibly, crept up 
and down the declivity of the rock. But in this hold the sparkling 
was so brilliant that every object the eye rested upon showed even 
to the most delicate details of its conformation, though the hue was 
uniform (a pale green), so that there was no splendor of tint, noth- 
ing but the wonder of a phosphoric revelation, grand, striking, mi- 
raculous to my sight, so unimaginable a spectacle was it. It was 
like, indeed, a glimpse of another world, of a creation absolutely dif- 
ferent from all scenes this earth had to submit, as though, in truth, 
one were taking a peep into some lunar cave rich with stalactites, 
wondrous with growths which owed nothing to the sun, all robed 
with the color of death — the pale pearl of the moonbeam ! 

Laura, whose hand grasped ray arm, held her breath. 

“ Did ever man see the like of such a thing afore f ’ exclaimed 
Finn, in an awed voice, as though amazement were of slow growth 
in him. 

Immediately on a line with the hatch, resting on a heap of shells 
whose summit rose to within an easy jump, lay the two skeletons in 
that embrace of theirs which was so full of horror, of pathos, of 
suggestion, of anguish. Ah, Heaven, what a light to view them in ! 
And yet they communicated an inexpressibly impressive element of 
unreality to the picture. It was as though the hand of some sor- 
cerer had lifted a corner of the black curtain of the future and en- 
abled you to catch a glimpse of the secret principality of the King 
of Terrors. 

“ One sees so little of this marvel here,” exclaimed Laura. “ How 
magnificent must be the scene viewed from the depths there !” 

“ Have you courage to descend ?” said I. 

She was silent a moment, eying askant, with averted face, the two 
skeletons immediately beneath; then, fetching an eager breath of 
resolution, she said, “ Yes, I have courage to go — with you.” 

* “Finn,” I exclaimed, “this is too grand and incomparable a 
spectacle to witness only in part. If we are to come off with our 
lives in this galleon, there,” said I, pointing into the hold, “ is the 
chance of a memory that I should bitterly reproach myself for not 


404 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


grasping and making the most of. Can you lower Miss Laura and 
myself into that hold onto that dry, smooth heap there, clear of 
where those figures lie ?” 

“ Why, yes, your honor, easy as lighting a pipe. William, fetch 
the chair, will ’ee, and overhaul the whip, and bring ’em along.” 

The chair was procured, a turn taken round the stump of the 
main-mast. I seated myself and was lowered, then down sank 
Laura and I lifted her out, and a moment after the four seamen 
sprang from the edge of the hatch. Now indeed we could behold 
\the glowing interior as it deserved to be seen. The galleon was 
apparently bulkheaded from her forecastle-deck down to the keel- 
son, and the fore-hold, accessible doubtless by a hatch in the lower 
forecastle -deck, was hidden from us. But aft, the vault -like in- 
terior stretched in view to plumb with the poop-deck, past which 
nothing of the after- hold was to be seen; but the vessel’s great 
beam, and such length of her as we commanded, submitted a large 
area of illuminated wonders, and as you stood gazing around, it made 
you feel as if you were under the sea, as if you had penetrated to 
the silent lighted hall of a dumb ocean-god that was eying you, for 
all you knew, from some ambush of glittering green growth whither 
he had fied on your approach. 

The irradiation was phosphoric, I was sure, by the hue and char- 
acter of it, but how kindled I could not imagine : the water had 
sunk low; in the death-like stillness .you could hear through the 
hatch-way the sounds of it gushing on to the rocks from the per- 
forations. It lay black, with gleams of green fire upon it, deep 
down amid the billowy sheathing of shell, under which, we might be 
sure, was secreted such of the cargo as had not been washed out of 
the vessel. Pendent from the upper deck was a very forest of mul- 
titudinous vegetation; the sides, far as the eye could pierce, were 
thickly covered ; the writhings of the grave-like glow quickened the 
snake-shaped plants, the bulbous forms, the distended fingers as of 
gigantic hands, green outlines which the imagination easily wrought 
into the aspect of the heads of men and beasts, and such wild sights 
as one traces in clouds ; these writhings vitalized all such sights into 
an aspect of growing and increasing life ; they seemed to stir un- 
easily, to mop and mow, elongate and shrink. 

“ It’s almost worth being cast away,” cried Cutbill, “ to see such 
a picter as this. Lord, now for a steamer to tow her into port ! 
My precious eyes ! what a fortune as a mere sight-seeing job !” 

“ If there’s treasure aboard there’s where it’ll lie stowed,” cried 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


405 


Dowling, pointing aft; his figure, with his long out-stretched arm, 
looking like a drawing in phosphorus. Indeed, in that astonishing 
light we all had a most unhuraan, unearthly appearance. Laura’s 
hair and skin were blended indistinguishably into a faint greenish 
outline, in the midst of which her violet eyes glowed black as her 
sister’s by lamplight.^ Suddenly I felt her hand tremble upon my 
arm. 

I feel a little faint,” she said, softly ; “ the atmosphere here is 
oppressive — and then those — ” She averted her eyes in a shudder- 
ing way from the skeletons. 

As she spoke the hatch was flashed into a dazzling blaze of sun- 
bright light. 

“ Quick, lads,” I cried, “ or the storm will be on us ! Hark, how 
near the thunder rattles !” 

The detonation boomed through the hollow hold as though a 
broadside had been fired within half a mile of us by a line-of-battle 
ship. 

“ There’s her ladyship a-singing out,” exclaimed Finn ; and sure 
enough we heard Lady Monson violently calling for her sister. 

“ Heaven preserve us ! I hope she hain’t been hurt by that 
flash,” shouted Cutbill. 

“ Up with us now, lads, before it is upon us !” I cried. 

Dowling, seizing the two ends of the whip, went up hand after 
hand, and in a few moments we were all on deck. 


406 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER XXXIIR 

THE SECOND NIGHT. 

The dim hectic that was lingering in the atmosphere when we 
entered the hold was now gone; the evening had fallen on a sud- 
den as dark as midnight ; it was all as black as factory-smoke away 
west and overhead, but a star still shone weak as a glowworm in 
the east. A second flash of lightning, but this time afar, glanced 
out the figure of Lady Monson standing on the forecastle and call- 
ing to Laura. 

“She is not hurt!” I exclaimed. 

“ I am coming, Henrietta,” said Laura. 

“ I shall die if I am left alone here !” cried Lady Monson. “ I 
believed that that flash just now had struck me blind.” 

“Keep hold of my arm, Laura,” said I, “and walk as if the deck 
were filled wdth snakes.” 

We cautiously stepped over the wild growths of the planks, ren- 
dered as dangerous as the holes outside of the rocks by the dusk, 
and approached Lady Monson. 

“ May I conduct you to the cabin ?” said 1. 

“I would rather remain here,” she answered; but there was no 
longer the old note of imperious determination in her voice. In 
fact, it was easy to see that she did not care to be alone when the 
lightning was fierce, and when a heavy storm of wet and wind was 
threatened. 

“ Shall we take in this here sail, sir ?” cried Finn from the other 
side of the deck, “ before it’s blown away ?” 

“ No ; keep all fast, Finn,” said I ; “ her ladyship desires to re- 
main here.” 

“ Are you going to stop with me, Laura ?” said Lady Monson. 

“Suffer me to answer for Miss Jennings,” I exclaimed. “I 
make myself answerable for her health and comfort. I could not 
endure that she should be exposed when there is a safe and dry 
shelter within a biscuit-toss of us.” 

Just then there was a blinding leap of lightning ; the electric spark 
seemed to flash sheer from the western confines to the eastern star. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 407 

scoring the black firmament with a line of fire that was like the 
splitting of it. A mighty blast of thunder followed. 

“Hark !” I cried, as the echoes of it went roaring and rolling into 
the distance. My ear had caught a rushing and hissing noise, and 
looking in the direction of the sea, over which the thick of the tem- 
pest was hanging, I saw what seemed a line of light approaching us. 

“ Rain !” I shouted, “ flashing the phosphorescent water up into 
flame.” 

“ No, sir, no !” roared Cutbill ; “ it’s wind, sir, wind ! ’Tis the 
boiling of the water that looks like fire.” 

He was right. An instant’s listening enabled me to catch the 
yell of the squall, sounding in the distance like a moaning sort of 
whistling through the seething of the ploughed and lacerated waters. 

“ Laura, give me your hand,” I cried. “ Lady Monson, if you are 
coming — ” 

“ I will accompany you,” she answered ; and very nimbly, and 
much to my astonishment, she slipped her hand under my arm and 
clung to me. So ! There was yet a little of the true woman remain- 
ing in her, and it would necessarily discover itself soonest in mo- 
ments of terror. 

The illuminated square of hatch-way not only enabled us to avoid 
the ugly gap, down which it was mighty easy to plump by mistake 
in the confusion of the blackness, and in the bewilderment following 
upon the blinding playing of the lightning ; it threw out a faint 
haze of light that went sifting into a considerable area over the 
main-deck, so that we were able to make haste without risk ; and 
after a few minutes of floundering, with an interval of groping, when 
we came to the incline of shells which conducted to the quarter- 
deck, I succeeded in lodging the two ladies fairly in the shelter of 
the cabin, and not a moment too soon. We were scarce entered 
when a squall of terrific violence burst upon the little island. It 
took the galleon with a glare of lightning of noontide brilliance, a 
roar of thunder, and such a hurricane howling of wind that no tor- 
nado ever shrieked under the heavens more deafeningly. One by 
one the men arrived. The lightning was so continuous that I could 
see their figures stealing along the deck, and they made for the cab- 
in door by it as directly as though guided by a stretched hand-line. 

“ Did you get in the sail ?” I cried to Finn. 

“ Lord love ’ee, sir,” he roared, “ it fled to the first blast like a 
puff of ’baccy-smoke.” 

“ Hark to the sea a-getting up !” said Dowling. “ Here’s a breeze 


408 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


to start this old wagin. Stand by for a slide, says I. I wish them 
holes was plugged.” 

“ Belay, you old owl,” grumbled Cutbill, hoarsely ; “ ain^t there blue 
lights enough here without you hanging of more out? There’ll be 
no sliding with this here hulk onless it’s to the bottom when it’s 
time for her to go.” 

Nevertheless, the sea had risen as if by magic. The swift heap- 
ing up of it was the stranger because there had been no preceding 
swell. The first of the squall had swept over a sheet of water pol- 
ished as any mirror, without a heave, as might have been seen by a 
glance at the island beach, where the edge of the ocean was scarce 
breathing. Now the shrilling and screaming of the wind was filled 
with the noise of ploughed and coiling surges dissolving in masses upon 
the rocks, from which they recoiled with a horrible hissing and ring- 
ing sound. The continual electric play filled the cabin with light, 
as it glittered upon the sail over the skylight above, or colored the 
black square of the door with violet and green and golden brilliance. 
It was true tropic lightning, a heaven of racing flames, and the thun- 
der a continuous roll, one burst following another till the explosions 
seemed blended into a uniform roar. 

Lady Monson had seated herself on Laura’s mattress. My dear 
girl and I reposed upon a roll of the sail ; the men had flung them- 
selves down, one leaning his head upon his elbow, another Lascar 
fashion, a third sitting upright, with his arms folded. There were 
no wonders in this cabin as in the hold, no marvellous and beautiful 
conformations, self-luminous, as one might say, and making a green- 
ish moonlight radiance of their own. Yet the interior seemed the 
wilder to the imagination for its very nakedness, for the austere des- 
olation of it as it glanced out to the levinbrand to its castle-shaped 
confines. It forced fancy to do its own work, to revitalize it with 
the ghostly shapes of beings that in life had filled it, to regarnish it 
with the feudal furniture of its age. I was heartily thankful that 
the two skeletons had been turned out. By every flash I could see 
Lady Monson’s black eyes roaming wildly, and though I might have 
counted upon Laura’s spirit while I was by her side and held her 
hand, I could have reckoned with equal assurance upon some wretched, 
distracting display in her sister, had the two embracing skeletons re- 
mained in yonder corner to serve as a moral for the motive of this 
voyage, to be witnessed by the illumination of the lightning, and to 
add a horror of their own to the sound of the thunder, to the fierce 
crying of the wind, and to the boiling of the beating seas. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


409 


“ I say, Finn,” I shouted to him, “ here’s the wind before the rain, 
my friend — you were mistaken.” 

“ My sight ain’t what it was, sir,” he answered. 

“ It’s a commotion to blow something along in sight of us,” said 
Cutbill. 

“Wonder if that there hold’s lighted up every night like that?” 
said Head ; “ enough to make a man think that there must be sper- 
rits aboard, who trims their inwisible lamps when it comes on dark.” 

“ Sorry I ain’t got my green spectacles with me,” said Cutbill ; 
“ if you was to put them on, mate, you’d see them sperrits dancing.” 

“ Proper sort of ball-room, though, ain’t it, miss?” exclaimed Finn, 
addressing Laura. 

“ How touching,” said Dowling, whom I could see by the light- 
ning pulling out his whiskers, as if trimming himself, “ for them 
skellingtons to go on a-loving of one another for all these years! 
Supposing they was husband and wife ! — then if they was living 
they’d ha’ given up clinging to each other a long time ago.” 

Cutbill hove a curse at him under his breath, but the man did not 
seem to hear. 

“ It’s curious,” continued this sea philosopher, in a salt, thick 
voice, that seemed not a little appropriate to the strong fish-like, 
marine, drowned smell of this interior, “ they should go on a-show- 
ing of affection which they’d sicken at if they was coated with 
flesh.” 

“ Pray hold your tongue !” said Lady Monson. “ Captain Finn, 
please request that sailor to be silent.” 

“ Told ’ee so,” I heard Cutbill growl ; “ always a-sticking of that 
hoof of yourn into the wrong b’iling.” 

Scarce had this been muttered when, all on a sudden, the squall 
ceased ; there fell a black, dead calm. No more lightning played, 
not a murmur of thunder sounded ; there was nothing to be heard 
but the roar of the near surf upon the beach and the creaming of 
seas off the huge area of the angry waters. In its way this' sudden 
cessation, this abrupt, this instant hush on high, was more terrifying 
than the wildest outbreak of tempest. The lightning had been so 
continuous that in a manner w^e had grown used to it, and we had 
been able to see one another’s faces by it while we conversed, as 
though by some lamp that waned and then waxed brilliant to its 
revolutions. Now we sat plunged in impenetrable blackness, while 
we sat hearkening, to use an Irishism, to the incredible silence of 
the atmosphere. Not the faintest loom of the galleon could be dis- 


410 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


tinguished through the open door, yet the sheen of the mystic illu- 
mination in her hold hovered like a faint green mist over the hatch, 
and dimly touched a little space of the marine growths round about. 

“What’s agoing to happen now?” cried Finn; but I did not 
know that he had left the cabin until I heard him calling from the 
outside, “ My eye ! your honor, here it comes ; a shower this time.” 

I groped my way out, feeling down, with my out-stretched hands, 
one of the men who was groping to the door also. The stagnant 
air was as thick as the fumes of brimstone, and oppressively hot. 
It made one gasp after coming out of the cabin, where it was kept 
almost cool, somehow, by the strong weedy and salt-water smell that 
haunted it. I looked over the rail and saw the sea, at the distance 
of about half a mile away from us, flaming as though it were an 
ocean of brandy on fire, only that the head of the luminous appear- 
ance had as straight a line to the eye as the horizon. But I could 
now observe how phosphorescent was the sea that, while tranquil, 
had hung a lustreless shadow by marking the vivid flashes of light 
in the white smother of the froth down in the gloom of the beach, 
and the sharp, darting gleams beyond. 

I groped back to the cabin, followed by the others, found Laura 
by the shadow her figure made upon the dim glimmer of the sail, 
and seated myself beside her. Then plump fell the rain. It was 
just a sheet of descending water, and, spite of the fossilized decks 
being thickened by marine verdure, the hull echoed to the down- 
pour with a noise as distracting and deafening as a goods train pass- 
ing at full speed close alongside. But the wonder of that rain lay 
not so much in its weight as in its being electric. It came down 
black, but it sparkled on striking the. decks as though every drop 
exploded in a blaze. I never witnessed such a sight before, and 
confess that I was never so frightened by anything in all my life. 

“ Why, it’s raining lightning !” called Head. 

“ The vessel will be set on fire !” cried Lady Monson. 

“ Nothin’ to be afraid of, my lady !” shouted Cutbill ; “ these fiery 
falls are common down here. I’ve been rolling up the maintop- 
garnsail in rain of this sort in the Bay of Bengal when ye’d ha’ 
thought that the ship had been put together out of lighted brim- 
stone ; every rope a streak of flame, and the ocean below as if old 
Davy Jones was entertaining his friends with a game of snap- 
dragon.” 

It was no doubt as Cutbill had said ; but then there was not only 
the sight of the fire flashing out along the length of the vessel, as 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


411 


far as the door-way permitted the eye to follow the deck, to the 
roaring, ebony, perpendicular discharge of the clouds ; there was the 
tremendous thought of our being perched on the head of a newly 
formed volcanic rock, that had leaped into existence on such another 
night as this. Suppose it sank under us ! Here were all necessary 
conditions of atmosphere, at least, to justify dread of such a thing. 
Would the ship float? Was she buoyant enough to tear her keel 
from the rock and outlive the whirlpool or gulf which might follow 
the descent of a mountain of lava of whose dimensions it was im- 
possible to form a conception ? But she had six holes in her ; and 
then, again, there was still plenty of water in the hold, whose vol- 
ume must already have been further increased — rapidly and greatly 
increased — by the cataract that fell in a straight line to the broad 
yawn of the uprooted hatch. 

My consternation was, indeed, so great that I could not speak. I 
felt Laura press my hand, as though the dew in the palm of it and 
the tremor of my fingers were hints sufficient to her of the sudden 
desperate fit of nervousness that possessed me ; but I could not find 
my tongue. Figure being out in a horrible thunder-storm, miles 
from all shelter, and seized by an overmastering apprehension that 
the next or the next flash will strike you dead ! My torment of 
mind was of this sort. I philosophized to myself in vain. There 
was nothing in the consideration that others shared my danger— 
most often a source of wonderful comfort to a person in peril ; that 
I could die but once ; that there were harder deaths than drowning, 
and the like, to restore me my self-possession. I was unnerved and 
in a panic of terror, fired afresh by the fearful fancy that had entered 
my brain on the preceding night, of this head of rock gaping and 
letting us down to God knows what depth ! All the time I was feel- 
ing, with a hideous, nervous intensity with feet, fibres, and instincts, 
for any faint premonitory jar or thrill in the hull to announce that 
this island was getting under way for the bottom again. 

I believe that the electric rain had a deal to do with the insuffer- 
able distress of my mind at that time, for when it ceased — with the 
same startling suddenness that had marked the drop of the wind — 
I rallied as though to a huge bumper of brandy. My hands were 
wringing wet, yet cold as though lifted from a bucket of water ; the 
perspiration poured down my face, but my nerves had returned 
to me. 

“ What, now, is to be the next act of this wild play ?” said I. 

“A breeze of wind, your honor!” cried Finn, out of the black 


412 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


gap of the door and sure enough, I felt the grateful blowing of air 
cooled by the wet. , 

The weight of rain had wonderfully deadened the sea, and the 
surf, that a little while ago broke with passion and fury, now beat 
the rocks with a subdued and sulky roaring sound. It had clarified 
to the westward somewhat, the dusk was of a thinner and finer sort 
there, with a look of wind in the texture of the darkness ; but it con- 
tinued a black night, with no other relief to the eye than the pale 
preternatural haze of light in the square of the main-hatch, and the 
occasional vivid flash of phosphor out at sea. But the wind swept 
up rapidly, and within a quarter of an hour of the flrst of its breez- 
ing it was blowing hard upon a whole gale ; the old galleon hummed 
to it as though she had all her rigging aloft. In an incredibly short 
time the sea was making clean breaches over the island, rendering 
the blackness hoary with a look of snow-squalls as it slung its sheets 
of thrilling and throbbing and hissing spume high into the dark 
sweep of the gale. One saw the difference between this sort of 
weather and the night on which the Bride had struck. Then the 
heaviest of the surf left a clear space of rock ; but there were times 
now when the smother came boiling to the very bends of the galleon, 
striking her till you felt her tremble with huge quivering upheavals 
of froth over and into her ; and it was like being at sea to look over 
the side and witness the white madness of water raging and beating 
on either hand. Every now and again a prodigious height of steam- 
like spray would go yelling up with the sound of a giantess’s scream 
into the flying darkness from some pipe-like conduit in the porous 
rock. These columns of water were so luminous with fire, so white 
with the crystalline smoke into which they were converted by the 
incalculable weight of the sea sweeping into the apertures, that, dark 
as it was, one saw them instantly and clearly. They soared with 
hurricane speed in a straight line, then were arched by the gale like 
a palm ; and if ever the wind brought the falling torrent to our 
decks, the stonified ship shook to the mighty discharge as though 
the point of land on which she lay were being rent by the force of 
flame and thunder which created it. 

We sat in the cabin in total darkness. It made our condition un- 
speakably dreadful to be without light. We had tinder-boxes, but 
there was nothing to set fire to, nothing that would steadily flame 
and enable us to see ; nor was there any prospect now of our being 
able to make a flare should we catch a glimpse of a ship, for what 
before would have made a fine bonfire was soaked through. It was 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


413 


up to a man’s knees on the main-deck, and the cabin would have 
been flooded but for the sharp spring or rise of the planks from the 
poop front to the stern. Such darkness as we sat in was like being 
blind. There was nothing to be seen through the door but pale 
clouds of* spray flying through the air. Just the faintest outline of 
our figures upon the white ground of the sail was visible, but so dim, 
so indeterminable, as to seem but a mere cheat of the fancy. A 
lamp or candle would have rendered our condition less intolerable. 
The men could then have made shift to bring some sherry and pro- 
visions from the forecastle ; the mere toying with food would have 
served to kill the time. We could have looked upon one another as 
we conversed, but the blackness of that interior was so profound that 
it weighed down upon us like the very spirit of dumbness itself. I 
have often since wondered whether men who are trapped in the bot- 
tom of a mine and lie waiting in the blackness there for deliverance — 
I have often wondered, I say, how long such poor fellows continue 
to talk to one another.- The intervals of silence, I am sure, must 
rapidly grow greater and greater. There is something in intense 
darkness in a time of peril that seems to eat all the heart and cour- 
age out of a man. The voice appears to fall dead in the opacity as 
a stone vanishes when hurled at snow. 

Cutbill and Finn did their best to keep up our hearts. They spoke 
of the certainty of this wind bringing a ship along with it. What 
should we have done without this galleon ? they asked ; but for the 
shelter it provided us with we should have been swept like smoke 
by the seas off the rocks. There was no fear, they said, of the old 
hooker not holding together. She was bound into one piece by the 
brine that had made a stone of her, and by the coating of shells, and 
if all ships afloat were as stanch as she was there would be an end 
of underwriting, and drowned sailors would be few. 

I helped in such talk and did my best, but our spirits could not 
continue to make headway against the blackness that was rendered 
yet more subduing by the uproar without, and by our being unable 
to imagine from moment to moment what was next to happen. 

By-and-by the men stretched themselves upon the sail and slept. 
I passed my arm round Laura’s waist and brought her head to my 
shoulder, and after a little her regular breathing let me know that 
she was asleep. Lady Monson was close to us, but she might have 
been on the forecastle for all that I could distinguish of her. Wheth- 
er she sat or reclined, whether she slumbered or was wide-awake 
throughout, I could not imagine. She never once spoke. At times 


414 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


my head would nod, but as regularly would I start into wakefulness 
afresh to the heavy fall of a sheet of water splashing into the main- 
deck, or to some sudden shock of the blow of a sea either against 
the galleon’s side or upon the near rock. Nobody had suggested 
keeping a lookout. Indeed, had ships been passing us every five 
minutes we could have done nothing. 

It was probably about two o’clock in the morning when the gale 
abated. The wind fell swiftly, as it mostly does in those parallels ; 
a star shone in the black square of the door ; the pouring and boil- 
ing of waters about us ceased, and the sounds of the sea sank away 
into the distance of the beach. I should have stepped on deck to 
take a look round but for Laura, who slumbered stirlessly and most 
reposefully upon my shoulder, supported by my arm, and I had not 
the heart to disturb the sweet girl by quitting her. Added to this, 
I could guess by looking through the door-way that it was still too 
black to see anything spite of the glance of starlight, and even though 
I should discern some pallid vision of a running ship, there was noth- 
ing dry enough to signal her with. So, being dog-tired, I let drop 
my chin, and was presently in as deep a sleep as the soundest slum- 
berer of them all. 

Deep and death-like indeed must have been my repose, for some- 
how I was sensible of being storm ily shaken even while my wits 
were still locked up in sleep. 

“Wh5% Mr. Monson, sir,” roared Finn in my ear, “ye ain’t so 
sleepy, I hope, as not to care to git away. Holloa, I say, holloa!”^ 

“Father of mercy, what is it now?” I cried, terrified in my dazed 
condition by his bull-like voice. 

“ Why, sir,” he answered, “ there’s a bark just off the island. She’s 
seen our signals, and’s slipping close in, with hands at the maintops’l 
brace.” 

“ Ha !” said I, and I sprang to my feet. 

Finn rushed out again. I had been the last of the sleepers, ap- 
parently, and was the only occupant of the cabin. The sun was risen, 
but, as I might suppose by his light, he had scarce floated yet to 
three or four times the height of his diameter. The door-way framed 
a silvery blue heaven, and the wondrous vegetation of the deck spar- 
kled in fifty gorgeous dyes, streaming wet after the night, and ev- 
ery blob of moisture was jewel-colored by the particular splendor 
it rested upon. I darted on to the quarter-deck, looked wildly tow- 
ards the forecastle, then perceived that my companions had gathered 
upon the poop. Laura came running to me, heedless of the perilous 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


415 


-deck, panting and speechless, her eyes radiant. There was a long 
swell washing from the westward, but to the eastward of the island 
the water ran away smooth like the short wake of a great ship, till 
the shouldering welter swept to it again : and there where the blue 
heave was, with the sun’s dazzle a little away to the right, was a small 
bark, slightly leaning from the pleasant morning breeze, and sliding 
slowly but crisply through it with a delicate lift of foam to the ruddy 
gleam of her sheathing, and her canvas glistening sunward, bright as 
the cloths of a pleasure-vessel. 

“ Tha^B what we’ve been a-waiting for !” shouted Finn. 

I came to a dead-halt, looking at the bark, with Laura hanging 
pn my arm. There was a fellow in the main-chains swinging a lead- 
line, but it was plain that the weight fell to the full scope without 
result. Then on a sudden round came the maintop-sail yard to us, 
with a flattening in of the cotton white cloths from the folds of the 
course to the airy film of the tiny sky-sail. 

“ Forward, Head ! forward, Dowling ! as if the devil were in chase 
of ’ee,” bawled Finn, “ and get that whip rove and the chair made 
fast.” 

The men ran to the work. Cutbill was following them. 

“No, William,” cried Finn; “stop where ’ee are a minute. The 
shipwreck ’tother night ain’t left me my old woice. Hist ! there’s a 
chap hailing us.” 

“ What island’s that ? and who are you, and what manner of craft 
is that you’re aboard of?” came from the rail of the bark’s quarter- 
deck, in a thin, reed-like, but distinctly audible voice. 

Cutbill roared back: “We’re the surwiwors of the schooner-yacht 
BridCy cast away three nights ago. Will you take us off, sir ?” 

“ How many are there of you ?” 

“ Seven, including two ladies.” 

“ Five, Mr. Cutbill, tell ’em,” shouted Dowling from the forecas- 
tle ; “ me and Head stops here.” 

“ Have you a boat ?” came from the bark. 

“No, sir,” roared Cutbill. 

“ I’ll send one. Make ready to come along.” 

Lady Monson was the first of us to press forward to the forecastle. 
The main-deck was ankle-deep, but we splashed through it like a 
pack of racing children, and gained the fore-end of the galleon with- 
out misadventure. I was mad with impatience, and all being ready 
with the whip and chair, I plumped Laura most unceremoniously 
into the seat, caught hold of the line over her head, and down we 


416 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


were lowered. Up then soared the empty chair, and out swmng her 
ladyship, who plunged into my arms, and came very near to throw- 
ing me, in her eagerness to leap out before the rocks were within 
reach of her feet. 

“Now,” said I, “the men can manage for themselves;” and with 
that I seized hold of Lady Monson’s hand, grasped Laura by the 
arm, and away we trudged to the beach o2 which the bark was 
lying. I was still so newly awakened from a very stupor of slum- 
ber that I moved and thought as though in a dream ; yet my wits 
were sufficiently collected to enable me to keep a bright lookout for 
holes. Again and again I secretly heaped curses upon the hinderance 
of this porous surface, for it forced us into deviations which seemed 
to make a league of a distance that would have been but a few min- 
utes’ walk on reasonable soil. The energy of our strides forbade 
speech; we could only breathe, and what little mind this sudden 
chance of deliverance had left us we had to exclusively devote to the 
pitfalls. 

They had lowered a boat aboard the bark by the time that we ar- 
rived at the water’s edge, breathless, and the three of us staring with 
a feverish greediness — a thirsty, frantic desire, I may say — which 
ocean peril, of all earthly dangers, paints with most perfection upon 
the eye. She was a good-sized boat of a whaling pattern, sharp at 
both ends, pulled by three men, who peered continuously over their 
shoulders as they rowed, and steered by a small man in a blue jacket 
and a broad-brimmed straw hat. By the time she was close in, the 
others had joined us. I had heard much heated talk among them as 
they came down from the galleon, springing over the holes and wells, 
and Finn at once said to me : 

“ What d’ee think, your honor ? here’s Head and Dowling gone 
mad ! They say there’s bullion to be met with in that hulk up there, 
and they mean to stop with her till they’ve got it.” ^ 

“ Nonsense !” I exclaimed. 

“By the ’Tarnal, then, Mr. Monson,” cried Dowling, “there’s no 
leaving with me yet. Here’s a chance that ain’t going to happen 
more’n once to a sailor-man.” 

“Ashore there!” came from the little chap at the tiller of the 
boat ; “ what sort of beach have you got for grounding ?” 

“ Pumice-stone, sir,” answered Finn. 

“ Don’t like it,” said the little fellow, with a shake of his head. 
“ Is it steep too ?” 

“ He ought to be able to see by looking over the side,” grum- 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


417 


bled Finn ; then, aloud, “ Slope’s as gradual as the calf of a man’s 
leg.” 

“ Well, then, you won’t mind wading,” said the little fellow. 

“Cutbill, Finn,” I cried, “carry her ladyship, will you? Dowling, 
or Head, come and lend me a hand to convey Miss Jennings.” 

The little fool obliged us to wade waist-high by keeping off, so 
confoundedly anxious was he to keep his keel clear of the ground. 
However, we easily got the ladies into the boat ; then Cutbill, Finn, 
and I gripped the gunwale and rolled inboard ; but Dowling coolly 
waded shoreward again to where Head was standing. 

“ Aren’t you two men coming?” cried the little fellow, who after- 
wards proved to be the second mate of the bark — a doll of a man 
with bright eyes, diminutive features, red beard, and hands and feet 
of the size of a boy of ten. 

“ No, sir,” answered Dowling ; “ there’s treasure in that there craft, 
and my mate and me’s going to stop to overhaul the cargo.” 

The three seamen belonging to the boat stared on hearing this, 
instantly pricking up their ears with sailors’ sympathy, and fastening 
devouring eyes on the galleon. 

“ They have no reason to believe there is treasure,” I cried ; “ it is 
a mere idle hope on their part. Exhort them to come, sir. They 
stand to perish if they are left here.” 

“ Now, then, don’t keep us waiting, my lads,” exclaimed the sec- 
ond mate. 

“ We mean to stop here,” responded Head, decisively. 

“But have you any provisions?” 

“ Enough washed out of the yacht to sarve our tarn,” answered 
Dowling; “but we should be glad of another cask of fresh-water.” 

“ Well, you’ll not get that,” answered the second mate ; “ our own 
stock’s not over-plentiful. Now, once more, are ye coming?” 

They shook their heads, and in a careless, reckless manner Head 
half swung his back upon us. 

“ Give way !” cried the second mate. 

“ But it’s like helping them to commit suicide, Finn,” I exclaimed. 

“ They ought to be seized and forced into the boat,” said Lady 
Monson, looking with a shudder at the galleon. 

“ They’ve got a notion there’s money in that there hulk,” ex- 
claimed Finn, “ and they’ll stick to her till they satisfies themselves 
one way or the other.” 

“ Small fear of them not being taken off when they’re ready to 
go,” said the mate, staring hard at Lady Monson and then at Laura. 
27 


418 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“That island’s a novelty which’ll bring every ship that heaves her 
mast-head within sight of it running down to have a look at. Vol- 
canic, eh ? And that shell-covered arrangement up there rose along 
with it?” 

“ Ay,” said Finn. 

“ Well,” said the little second mate, “ why shouldn’t she have 
treasure aboard ? She has the look of one of them plate ships you 
read of.” 

“ I’d take my chance with them two sailors,” said the fellow who 
was pulling the bow oar. 

“ So would I,” said the man next to him. 

The stroke gazed yearningly through the hair over his eyes. 

The sea of the preceding night had cleared the beach of every 
vestige of the yacht ; all the fragments which had littered the rocks 
were gone. As we drew out from the island it took in the brilliant 
sunshine the complexion of marble, and the wondrous old galleon 
lying on top sparkled delicately with many tints as our point of 
view was varied by the stroke of the oars. The resolution of the 
two men vexed and grieved me beyond all expression ; but what was 
to be done ? My spirit shrunk to the mere thought of their deter- 
mination when I reflected upon the damp, dark, ocean - smelling 
cabin, the luminous hold, the two skeletons, the vegetation and 
shells, whose novelty, wonder, glory, seemed to carry the structure 
out of all human sympathy, as though it were the product of a form 
of existence whose creations were not to be met with under the stars. 
We drew rapidly to the bark. She was an exceedingly handsome 
model, painted green, rigged with a masterly eye to accurate adjust- 
ment down to the most trivial detail. 

“What’s her name, sir?” asked Finn. 

“The Star of Peace'' answered the second mate. 

“Homeward bound, I hope, sir?” says Cutbill. 

“ Ay,” said the little man, grinning, “ and long enough about it 
too. Sixty-one days from Melbourne as it is.” 

Finn whistled ; Laura looked at the mate on hearing him say that 
the ship was from Melbourne. 

“Oars!” A boat-hook caught the accommodation-ladder, and we 
gained the deck. The captain of the bark stood in the gangway to 
receive us ; he was a Scotchman, with a slow, kind, thoughtful face, 
gray hair that showed like wire on end with thickness and stubborn- 
ness a^ he lifted his straw hat to the ladies. His gray, keen, sea- 
wardly eye rapidly took stock of us. I briefly related our story. 


AK OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


419 

“ I remember the Bride, sir,” he said. “ She was owned by Sir 
Wilfrid Monson, who married Miss Jennings, of Melbourne.” 

“ This is Lady Monson,” I said ; “ her sister, too. Miss Jennings.” 

“Indeed!” he exclaimed, with a sort of slow surprise, giving a 
little animation to his speech. “ I have the honor of being ac- 
quainted with Mr. Jennings. He came on board this vessel three 
days before we sailed along with a gentleman, Mr. Hanbury ” — Lau- 
ra slightly nodded — “ to whom a portion of the freight belongs. I 
see the likeness now,” he added, looking with admiration at Lady 
Monson. 

She glowed crimson, and turned with a haughty step to the rail 
to conceal her face. 

“I have always heard this world was a small one, captain,” said I, 
“small enough, thank God, to enable your ship to fall in with that 
rock there. To what port are you bound ?” 

“ London, sir. There are a couple of cabins at your service. 
There are no females aboard,” looking at Laura and running his eye 
over her dress, with a glance on to Lady Monson ; “ I judge ye were 
cast away in little more than what yon stood up in.” 

“ By-the-way, Laura,” said I, “ we ought not to leave your box of 
odds and ends behind us.” 

“Oh no; bring off everything,” exclaimed the captain. “I’ll 
send the boat ashore.” 

It was arranged that Finn should fetch the box, and make a final 
effort to persuade the two men to come off. The captain of the 
bark laughed when I told him of the fellows’ resolution, and seemed 
to make little of it. “ If they’ve got a notion there’s treasure there, 
sir,” he exclaimed, “ you’ll not move ’em. I know Jack’s nature. 
He’d follow old Nick if he believed he’d take him to where there 
were dollars. Ships enough ’ll be coming in sight of that rock. I 
don’t fear for the men’s safety.” 

“ But it is a volcanic creation, captain. It may vanish just as it 
rose, in a flash.” 

“ Ha !” cried he, sucking in his breath, “ my word I but I should 
never have thought of that. Better try and coax those men off,” 
he exclaimed, walking to the rail and putting his head over and ad- 
dressing Finn, who had entered the boat. 

“ I’ll do my best, sir,” answered Finn, and shoved off. 

“ Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the captain, returning to us, 
“ will you step below that we may see how you’re to be made com- 
fortable ?” 


420 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


After the galleon, the cabin of a smack would have been sheer 
Paradise. Here was a breezy, plain, substantial, homely interior. 
The sunshine brilliantly flooded it, the eastern splendor of water 
rippled in lines of light upon the bulkheads ; the hot morning breeze 
gushed humming through the skylight into it. The captain led us 
to a couple of berths forward of the state cabin, and the first object 
I witnessed was my face reflected in a looking-glass. Heavens! 
what a contrast to the Pall Mall exquisite of a few months before ! 
Unshaven, sun-blackened, unbrushed, unwashed ; my linen dark, my 
clothes expressing every feature of shipwreck in rents, stains, and 
the like ; I needed but a few further grimy embellishments to have 
passed to admiration as a back alley sailor. The captain’s name was 
Richardson ; he seemed fascinated by Lady Monson, called for his 
servant or steward, bade him procure at once every convenience of 
hot water, towels, hair-brushes, and the like ; continued to congratu- 
late himself upon having been the means of delivering the daughters 
of Mr. Jennings, of Melbourne, from a situation of distress and peril, 
and so warmed up to the occasion, but slowly as the kettle boils, 
that I easily saw there was small fear of Laura and her sister not 
being made as thoroughly comfortable as the accommodation supplied 
by the bark would permit. 

T was too anxious, however, about the fellows on the island to 
linger below, and went on deck leaving Captain Richardson talking 
to the ladies, protesting in hearty Scotch accents his anxiety to serve 
them to the utmost of his ability, questioning the steward about 
sheets and blankets, bidding him likewise tell the cook to make 
haste with the breakfast, asking Lady Monson if she drank tea or 
coffee, and so on. The boat was off the island and Finn ashore, 
coming down from the galleon to the beach with Laura’s box slung 
between him and Dowling, while Head trudged close behind. Then 
there was a long talk ; I could see Finn pointing to the hulk and 
then to the bark, flourishing his arms and emphatically nodding at 
one or the other as he addressed them. Cutbill stood in the gang- 
way looking on. 

“ I hope the captain will prevail upon them to leave that place,” 
said I to him. 

“He won’t, sir,” answered Cntbill ; “and blowed if I don’t feel 
now, Mr. Monson, as if I’d made a mistake in leaving it my- 
self!” 

Here the mate of the bark stepped up to me — an immense man, 
even bigger than Cutbill, in a long white coat with side pockets, so 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


421 


vast that one might have thought that he could have stowed the little 
second mate away in one of them. 

“Do those chaps think that there’s plunder to be found aboard 
that effigy ?” he asked, in a voice’' rendered unutterably hoarse and 
harsh by probably years of roaring out in foul weather, supplement- 
e’H by rum and the natural gift of a deep note. 

“ Don’t know about plunder, sir,” answered Cutbill, “ but they 
reckon there may be chests of plate and bullion stowed away aft.” 

“ Stowed away in their eye 1” growled the mate. “ Where did she 
come from ?” 

“ The bottom of the sea, sir.” 

“An old galleon,” said he, cocking his eye at her, “ and a volcanic 
burst up,” he continued. “ Well, I don’t know, if so be she’s a gal- 
leon, likely as not those chaps are right. Why, they thought noth- 
ing, in the days she belonged to, of stowing a matter of six or seven 
millions of dollars in the lazarets of craft of that kind.” 

“ By the Lord ! Mr. Monson,” burst out Cutbill, “ I must go ashore, 
sir ! I feel I’m a-doing wrong in being here.” 

“You’ll have to swim, then,” said the mate, dryly, “for that boat 
is meant for our davits when she comes alongside, and it will then be 
time to trim sail.” 

At that moment I observed Finn shaking the two sailors by the 
hand. He then entered the boat and made for the bark, while Head 
and Dowling walked slowly up to the galleon, and sat down in the 
shade of her under her counter, whence they continued to watch ns. 

“ It’s no good, Mr. Monson, sir,” said Finn, as he came clambering 
and panting over the side ; “ they call it a gold-mine, and there’s no 
persuading of ’em to leave it.” 

“ Up with this boat,” roared the mate ; “ stand by to round in on 
those top-sail braces.” 

The boat soared to her davits, the milk-white squares of canvas on 
the main went floating onward into full bosoms; the bark, bowing 
the swell, broke the flashing water into trembling lines ; slowly, al- 
most imperceptibly, that marble-looking hump of rock, with its glit- 
tering centre-piece, stole away upon the quarter, its solitude somehow 
making the ocean look as wide again as it was. Laura came on deck 
and stood by my side. 

“ Oh, Charles !” she exclaimed, “ we have left the poor fellows be- 
hind, then ?” 

“ They refuse to leave. Observe Cutbill,” said I, pointing to the 
huge figure of the honest tar as he lay over the rail, his face knotted 


422 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


up with conflicting emotions, while his expression was rendered spas- 
modic by his manner of gnawing upon a quid that stood in his 
cheek. “ He is lamenting the loss of a princely income, and would 
have returned to the island could'‘he have got a boat. Mark Finn, 
too ; with what a mixture of thirstiness and misgiving does he 
stare !” 

“ The poor creatures are waving to us,” said Laura. 

Instantly throughout the bark there was a general flourishing of 
arms and Scotch caps and straw hats. We lingered watching them 
till the island looked to be no more than a small blue cloud floating 
low upon the water. 

“ Poor Wilfrid !” suddenly exclaimed Laura, and her eyes dimmed 
with tears. 

“ It has been a hard time for you, dear one !” I exclaimed, “ but 
the end of the black chapter is reached, let us believe. See, here 
comes the captain’s man with a tray of good things. But I must 
positively shave before I can sit down to breakfast, if there is a razor 
on board to borrow.” 

We walked together to the companion-hatch, but even there we 
lingered a little, with our eyes dwelling upon that distant azure film 
which seemed now to be fainting out as though it were a wreath of 
sea-mist that was being fast devoured by the sun. 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


423 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

CONCLUSION. 

Our passage home was extraordinarily long. It took us seventy- 
five days to arrive at the English Channel from the latitude of the 
volcanic island. The captain thought himself under a spell, ^d 
swore that he believed his bark was to be made a “ Flying Dutch- 
man ” of. Yet she was a clipper keel, moulded in exquisite con- 
formity with all theories of swiftness in sailing, and when a fresh 
and favorable wind blew she ate through it as though with the iron 
bite of a powerful steamer. But had she spread the canvas of a 
Royal George over the hull of a racing yacht she could have done 
nothing in the face of the dead calms and light baffling breezes 
which held us motionless or sent us sliding southward for days and 
days. Scarce had we struck soundings, indeed — that is to say, hard- 
ly had we entered the mouth of the English Channel — wfflen a whole 
gale of wind blew down upon us from the eastward, and drove us a 
third of the distance across to the shores of the United States. 

How bitterly sick I grew of this time I cannot express. I had 
lost everything that I had brought with me in the wreck of the 
Bride, and was entirely dependent upon the kindness of the cap- 
tain and the mates for a supply of the few wants I absolutely 
required. One lent me a shirt, another a pair of socks, a third a 
razor, and so on, but it was a miserable existence. A few weeks of 
it I should have found supportable by comparing the life with the 
horrors we had been delivered from ; but as time went on gratitude 
languished, the sense of contrast lost something of its edge ; I ab- 
horred the recollection of the galleon, yet it really seemed as though 
we had merely exchanged one form of imprisonment for another; 
as if old Ocean indeed were suffering us to amuse ourselves with a 
dream of escape (as a cat humors a mouse in that way), to drop with 
a spring upon us ultimately when he had sickened the patience out 
of our souls. 

I need not say that Lady Monson made the worst of everything. 
She had to share a cabin with her sister, and to that extent, there- 
fore, was associated with her, but her behavior to Laura, as to me, 


424 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


was cold, haughty, disdainful. She froze herself from head to foot, 
gave us a wide berth when on deck, would break away abruptly if 
one or the other of us endeavored to engage her in conversation, 
and was as much alone as she could possibly contrive to be. It is 
hard to say whether she disliked me more than her sister. Yet I 
could not but feel sorry for her, heartily as I hated her. What was 
her future to be? What had life in store for one whose memory 
was charged as hers was? Laura tried hard to find out what her 
intentions were, what plans she had formed, but to no purpose. 
But then it was likely that the woman had not made out any pro- 
gramme for herself. 

Both she and my darling were desperately put to it for the want 
of apparel. Each had but the dress she stood in, for Laura’s box 
had contained little more than under-linen. They had arrived on 
board the bark without covering for their heads ; but this was 
remedied by the second mate’s presenting Laura with a new straw 
hat, and later on we heard through Finn that one of the crew had 
a new grass hat in his chest which he desired to present to Lady 
Monson. I see her ladyship now in that sailor’s hat, over which she 
tied a long brown veil that had come ashore upon the island in 
Laura’s box. I witness again the fiery gleam of her black eyes 
penetrating the thin covering. I behold the captain, with his slow 
Scotch gaze following her majestic figure as she glides lonely to and 
fro the deck, seldom daring to address her, and rapidly averting his 
glance when she chanced to round her face towards him on a sud- 
den. And I see Laura, too, sweet as a poet’s fancy I would some- 
times think, in the mate’s straw hat perched on top of her golden 
hair, a sailor’s half-fathom of ribbon fioating from it down her back, 
her violet eyes lovely once more with their old tender glow, and 
with the smiles which sparkled in them and with the love which 
deepened their hue as she let me look into them. 

She had soon regained her health and spirits. I never would 
have believed that two women born of the same parents could be so 
absolutely dissimilar as these sisters. Laura made no trouble of 
anything. She ate the plain cabin food as though she heartily en- 
joyed it; cooled me down when I was slowly growing mad over 
some loathsome pause of calm, made light of the embarrassing slen- 
derness of her wardrobe. She had always one answer: “This is 
not the galleon, Charles. We’re bound to England. You must be 
patient, my dear.” 

I remember once saying to her, “ Y^our dress is very shabby, my 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


425 


pet. It no longer sits to your figure as it did. It shows like ship- 
wrecked raiment. Salt-water stains are very abundant, and your 
elbow cannot be long before it peeps out. How, then, is it that I 
find you more engaging, more lovely, more adorable in this castaway 
attire than ever I thought you aboard the Bride, where probably you 
had a dozen dresses to wear ?” 

“Mere prejudice,” she answered, laughing and blushing. “You 
will outgrow many opinions of this kind.” 

“ No ! But don’t you see what a moral shipwreck enables you 
to point to your sex, Laura?” said I. “Girls will half ruin their 
fathers, and wives almost beggar their husbands, for dress. They 
clothe themselves for men. No doubt you consider yourself wholly 
dependent for two-thirds of your charms upon dress. All women 
think thus — the young and the old, the beautiful and the — others. 
But what is the truth? You become divine in proportion as you 
grow ragged !” 

“ When I am your wife you will not wish that I shall be divine 
only on the merits of rags,” said she. 

“ Well, my dear,” said I, “ old Ocean has given me one hint con- 
cerning you. Should time ever despoil you of a single charm there is 
the remedy of shipwreck. We will endeavor to get cast away again !” 

Thus idly would we talk away the days. No ship ever before 
held such a pair of spoonies, I dare swear, spite of the traditions of 
the East India Company. But sweet as our shipboard intercourse 
was, our arrival in England threatened delays and difficulties. First 
of all, she declared that she could not dream of marrying without 
her father’s consent. This was, no doubt, as it should be, and sure- 
ly I could not love her the less for being a good daughter. But 
the consent of a man who lived in Melbourne, and who had to be 
addressed from England, signified, in those ambling times, the delay 
of hard upon a year. 

“ A year, Laura !” I cried on one occasion, while debating this 
subject ; “ think of it ! With the chance, perhaps, of your father’s 
reply miscarrying!” 

She sighed. “ Yes, it is a long time. Oh, if Melbourne were 
only in Europe I Yet it cannot be helped, Charles.” 

“But my heart’s delight!” I exclaimed, “ why should not we get 
married first and then write for your father’s consent?” 

No ; she must have her papa’s sanction. 

“ All right, birdie,” said I ; “ anyhow, you will remain in England 
till you hear from him, and so we shall be together.” 


426 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ It might shorten the time,” she said, with a little blush and a 
timid glance at m^ under the droop of her eyelids, “ if you and I 
sailed to Melbourne.” 

“ It would, my precious !” I answered ; “ but suppose on your in- 
troducing me your father should object ?” 

“ Oh no, Charles ! he will not object,” she exclaimed, with a con- 
fident shake of the head. 

“ In fact, then, Laura,” said I, “ you are sure your papa will sanc- 
tion our marriage ?” 

“ Quite sure, dear.” 

“ Then, would it not come to the same thing if we got married on 
our arrival in England ?” 

This was good logic, but it achieved nothing for me, and since I 
saw that her father’s sanction would contribute to the happiness of 
her married life, I never again attempted to reason with her on the 
subject. 

At last, one morning we found ourselves in the English Channel, 
bowling over the green ridges of it before a strong south-westerly 
wind, and within fifty hours of making the Lizard Light the brave 
little bark Star of Peace was being warped to her berth in the East 
India Docks. Down to that very moment, incredible as it may 
seem. Lady Monson had given neither her sister nor myself the 
vaguest hint of what she intended to do. As we stood waiting to 
step ashore she arrived on deck, and approaching Laura, exclaimed, 

“ Mr. Monson, I presume, will escort you to a hotel.” 

“ Won’t you accompany us, Henrietta?” her sister asked. 

“ No, I choose to be independent. I shall go to such and such a 
hotel and she named the house at which she had stopped with 
Colonel Hope-Kennedy when she arrived in London on her way to 
Southampton. “ You can address me there, or call upon me, Laura. 
I have not yet decided on any steps. In all probability I shall re- 
turn to Melbourne, but not at present.” 

She extended her hand coldly to her sister, and gave me a haughty 
bow. Laura bit her lips to restrain her tears, but her pride was 
stung; disgust, and amazement too, fell cool upon her grief. 

The last I ever saw of Lady Monson was as she passed along the 
quay towards the dock-yard gates. As she paced forward, stately, 
slow, her carriage queenly and easy, as though sumptuously clothed, 
and in the full pride of her beauty she trod the floor of a ball-room, 
the scores of sailors, laborers, loafers, who thronged the decks turned 
to- a man to stare after her. A strange and striking figure indeed 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


427 


she made, habited in the dress which she wore when the Shark foun- 
dered, and which, as you may suppose, by this time showed very 
much like the end of a long voyage. The brown veil concealed her 
features, and, to a certain degree, qualified the outlandish appearance 
of the sailor’s grass hat upon her head. 

“ So !” said I, as she disappeared ; “ and now, Laura, it is for you 
and me to go ashore.” 

We bade a cordial farewell to Captain Richardson and his mates, 
and to Finn and Cutbill, both of whom promised to call upon me. 
I had the address of the owner of the vessel, and told the skipper 
that next day I would communicate with the office and defray what- 
ever expenses we had put the ship to. I further took the addresses 
of the captain and his mates, that I might send them some token of 
my gratitude for our deliverance, and for the many kindnesses they 
had done us during the long and tedious passage. 

A few hours later I had comfortably lodged Laura in a snug pri- 
vate hotel within an easy walk of my lodgings, to which I forthwith 
repaired, and took possession of afresh, with such an emotion of be- 
wilderment excited in me by the familiar rooms, and by the feeling 
that I was once more in London, with no more runaway wives to 
chase, no more Dutchmen to fire into, no more duels to assist in, no 
more volcanic rocks to split upon, and no more galleons to sleep in, 
that I felt like a man just awakened from some wild and vivid dream, 
whose impressions continue so acute that the familiar objects his 
eyes open upon seem as phantasms that must presently fade. My 
first act was to send a milliner and a dress-maker to Laura, and to 
see in other ways to her immediate requirements ; my next to address 
a letter to Wilfrid’s solicitors, in which I acquainted them with the 
loss of the Bride and the death of my cousin. Whom else to write 
to at once about the poor fellow I did not know. I asked after his 
infant, and requested them to tell me if the child was still with the 
lady with whom my cousin had placed it before leaving England. I 
added that I should be pleased to see one of the partners and relate 
the full story of the voyage, the object of which I could not doubt 
Wilfrid had informed them of before sailing. 

I spent the evening with Laura. All our talk was about what she 
was to do until she had heard from her father, to whom she told me 
she had written a long letter within an hour after her arrival at the 
hotel, “ so as to lose no time, Charles.” She had no relations in Eng- 
land — scarcely an acquaintance, for the matter of that ; with whom 
was she to live, then ? Even had Lady Monson settled dowifin a 


428 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


house, she was not a person with whom I could have desired the girl 
I was affianced to to be long and intimately associated. The notion 
of her returning to Australia alone was not to be entertained. There 
seemed nothing, then, for it but for me to overhaul the list of my 
connections, to make experiments in the direction of relations, and 
endeavor to find a home for her with one or another of them until 
there should some day arrive a mail from Australia, giving me leave 
to take her to my heart. 

Well, it was next morning that I had finished breakfast and 
was sitting musing over a fire, with a newspaper on my knee. My 
mind was full of the past. I remember looking round me almost 
incredulously, with eyes that still found the familiar furniture of my 
room unreal, arid indeed almost impossible, listening with ears that 
could scarcely accept as actual the transformation of the roar and 
beat and wash of the seas, into the steady hum of ceaseless traffic in 
the great London road-way into which the street I occupied opened. 
Years had elapsed, it seemed, since that night when my servant had 
ushered in my cousin, and I saw in fancy the wild roll of his eyes 
round the apartment, the crazy flourish of his hands, his posture as 
he sank his head upon the table, battling with his sobbing breath. 

I was disturbed by a smart knock on the door. “ Come in !” The 
landlord entered; a thin, iron-gray, soft-voiced man, who had for 
many years been butler in an earl’s family, and who had retired and 
started a lodging-house on discovering that he had married a woman 
of genius in the shape of a cook. 

“ There’s a person below named Muffin would like to see you, sir.” 

I stared at him as if he were mad. 

“ Muffin !” I whispered. 

“ That was the name he gave, sir,” he exclaimed, astonished by my 
amazement. 

“ Muffin !” I repeated, scarce crediting my hearing; “ describe him, 
Mr. Cork.” 

“A clean, yellow -faced man, sir, hair of a coal - blackness, looks 
down when he speaks, sir, seems a bit shaky in the ankles ; a gentle- 
man’s servant, I should say, sir.” 

“ Show him up, Mr. Cork !” I exclaimed, doubting the description 
as I had the name, so impossible did it seem that this person could 
be Wilfrid’s valet. 

In a few moments the door was opened and in stepped Muffin ! — 
the Muffin of the Bride^ Muffin the ventriloquist. Muffin the whipped 
and decked, and, as I could have solemnly sworn. Muffin the drowned! 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


42d 

He stood before me with the old familiar crook of the left knee, 
holding his hat with both hands against his stomach, his head 
drooped, his lips twisted into their familiar grin of obsequious apol- 
ogy. His yellow face shone, his hair was as lustrous as the back of 
a rook ; he wore large, loose, black kid-gloves, and he was attired in 
a brand-new suit of black cloth. I know nothing in the way of 
shocks severer for the moment, that tells more startlingly upon the 
whole nervous system, than the meeting with a man whom one has 
for months and months believed dead. I was unable to speak for 
some moments. I shrank back in my chair when he entered, and in 
that posture eyed him, while he stood looking downward, smiling, 
and suggesting in his attitude respectful regret for taking the liberty 
of intruding. 

“ Well,” said I, fetching a deep breath, “ and so you are Muffin 
indeed, eh? Well, well! Why, man, I could have sworn we left 
you a corpse floating close to a volcanic island near the equator.” 

“ So I suppose, sir,” he exclaimed, “ but I am thankful to say, 
sir, that I was not drowned.” 

I motioned him to sit ; he put his hat under the chair, crossed his 
legs, and clasped his hands over his knee. A sudden reaction of 
feeling, supplemented by his strange appearance, produced a fit of 
laughter in me. The image of his radish-shaped form, half naked, 
quivering down the ranks of the seamen, with Cutbill, grotesquely 
apparelled, compelling him to keep time, recurred to me. 

“You seem resolved that I shall believe in ghosts. Muffin,” said I; 
“ and pray how came you to learn that I was saved from the wreck ? 
that I had returned to England ? was here in these lodgings, in short, 
where I arrived only yesterday ?” 

“ Sir Wilfrid received a letter from his solicitors this morning, 
sir, enclosing your letter to them.” 

“ Sir Wilfrid !” I shouted ; “ is he alive ?” 

“ Oh yes, sir, and very much better both in body and mind. I’m 
’appy to say, sir. He would have called on you himself, sir, but 
he’s suffering from an attack of gout in his left foot, and has been 
obliged to keep his bed for two days.” 

I jumped from my chair and fell to pacing the room, to work off 
by locomotion something of the amazement that threatened to addle 
my brains. 

“Wilfrid alive!” I muttered. “What will Laura say to all this? 
Muffin !” I cried, rounding upon him, “ what you are telling me is a 
miracle, a thing beyond all credibility ! Why, we saw the yacht go 


430 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


to pieces ! Nearly the whole mass of her, in fragments, came ashore, 
along with four or five dead bodies. How in Heaven’s name did 
Sir Wilfrid escape ?” 

He responded by telling me the story. Johnson, the man who 
had died upon the island, was perfectly right in saying that he be- 
lieved a number of men had rushed to one of the boats shortly after 
the yacht had struck. I myself remember being felled by a gang of 
people flying aft in the blackness. Mufiin was one of them. The 
white water over the side enabled them to see what they were about. 
The boat, a noble structure, of a life-boat’s quality of buoyancy, was 
successfully lowered, seven men got into her, one of whom was Muf- 
fin. The yacht was then fast breaking up. The men, to escape 
being pounded to pieces by the battering-rams of the wreckage 
hurled on every curl of sea, headed out from the island, straining 
their hearts at the oars ; but they were again and again beaten back. 
There were but five oars, and Muffin and one of the seamen, having 
nothing to do, sat crouching in the stern-sheets. Suddenly a fig- 
ure showed close alongside crying loudly for help ; Muffin grasped 
him by the hair of his head, the other fellow leaned over, and be- 
tween them they dragged the man in. It was my cousin. By dint 
of sustained and mad plying of oars they drew the boat clear of the 
wreckage, bringing the white line of the thunderous surf on the 
island beach upon their quarter ; they then gave the stern of the 
little fabric to the wind and seas, and fled forw'ard like smoke, and 
when the dawm broke they were miles out of sight of the rock, A 
day and a night of dead calm followed ; they were without food or 
water, and their outlook was horrible ; but at sunrise on the third 
day they spied the gleam of a sail, towards which they rowed, and 
before the darkness fell they were safely on board a large English 
brig bound to Bristol. 

Such was Muffin’s story. He said that Sir Wilfrid, on being told 
it was Muffin who had rescued him, promised to take him back into 
his service on reaching England. He added that my cousin had 
entirely lost the craze that had possessed him concerning his bulk 
and stature. The yacht on going to pieces had liberated him, and 
with his sudden and startling enlargement his mad fancy entirely 
passed away. So that poor old Jacob Crimp came very near the 
truth when he had suggested to me that my cousin’s senses might 
be recovered by a great fright. 

Muffin asked me the names of the others who were saved. I told 
him who they were. 


AN OCEAN tragedy. 


431 


“ And Mr. Cutbill wasn’t drowned, sir ?” said he. 

“ No,” I replied. 

“ And Captain Finn is saved, too. I’m so glad, sir.” 

But the rogue gave me a look that clearly signified he was very 
sorry indeed. 

An hour later I was sitting hy my cousin’s bedside. He was 
stopping at a hotel near Charing Cross. I will say nothing of the 
warmth of our meeting. The tears were in my eyes as I grasped 
and retained his hand. He was perfectly rational, had a more sen- 
sible look in his face than I had ever witnessed in it, and his mem- 
ory was as clear as my own. It seemed to me that the shock of 
shipwreck had worked wonders in him, though, to be sure, strong 
traces of congenital weakness were still visible in the quivering eye- 
lids, the occasional, irrelevant, loud laugh, the boyish eagerness of 
manner, with now and again the passing shadow of a darkening 
humor. For a long time we seemed able to talk of nothing but the 
wreck of the Bride and of our several experiences. I very delicately 
and vaguely referred to the delusion that had imprisoned him in 
his cabin, but his stare of surprise advised me that he had no recol- 
lection whatever of his craze, and it was like a warning to me to 
instantly quit the subject. He told me that MufiSii had behaved 
with a touching devotion to him while they were in the boat, pil- 
lowing his head when he slept, cooling his hot brow with water, 
sheltering him from the heat of the sun by standing behind him 
with his jacket out-stretched to the nature of a little awning. He 
asked tenderly after Laura, and made many inquiries after the men 
who had been saved, bidding me tell Finn, should he visit me, to 
call upon him that he might obtain the names and addresses of the 
survivors, and enable them to replace the effects they had lost by 
the foundering of the yacht. 

“ You do not ask after your wife, Wilfrid,” said I, a little nerv- 
ously. 

“ Oh, you told me she was saved,” he answered, languidly ; then 
after a pause he added, “ Where is she ?” 

“ She refused to accompany her sister,” said I ; “ she loves inde- 
pendence. She has gone alone to such and such a hotel, where I 
presume she is still to be found.” 

His face flushed at the name of that hotel ; he instantly remem- 
bered. He bent his eyes downward, and said, as if to himself, “ Yes, 
she is of those who return to their bonnet.” 

“ What are your plans ?” said I. 


432 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


“ As regards Lady Monson, do you mean ?” 

“ Well, she is still your wife, and what concerns her concerns you, 
I suppose, more or less.” 

“ I shall not meddle with her,” said he, making a horrible gri- 
mace to an involuntary twitch of his gouty foot ; “ she can do what 
she pleases.” 

“ She talks of returning to Australia.” 

“ Let her go,” said he. 

And this, thought I, is the issue of your wild pursuit of her ! 
Had he but waited a few months, disgust and aversion would have 
grown strong in him. He would have been guiltless of shedding 
the blood of a fellow-creature; he would have preserved his noble 
yacht; but then, to be sure, I should probably never have met Laura! 

His eye was upon me, while I mused a little in silence. 

“ My solicitors advise proceedings in the Divorce Court,” said he, 
“ but I say no. I certainly should never try my hand at marriage 
again, and therefore a divorce would serve no end of my own. But 
it might answer 'her purpose very well indeed ; it would free her, 
and I do not intend that she shall have her liberty.” 

“You will have to maintain her.” 

“ Oh, my solicitors will see to that,” he answered, with a curious 
smile. 

“ Wilf,” said I, “ she may fall very low, and then, when nobody 
else will have anything more to do with her, she will return to you 
as your lawful wife, and play the devil with your peace and good 
name.” 

“ I am not going to free her,” said he, snappishly. 

“ Do you mean to make any stay in London ?” said I. 

“ I am waiting till the gout leaves me,” he answered, “ and shall 
then go abroad. I have been recommended to do so. It is pretty 
sure to come to the ears of Colonel Hope-Kennedy’s friends that I 
shot him in a duel. He was a widower and childless, but he has a 
sister, a Lady Guthrie, who adored the ground he trod on, and 
thought him the noblest creature in the universe. My solicitors 
advise me not to wait until I am charged with the fellow’s death, 
and so I am going abroad.” 

“Humph!” said I; “and how am I to be dealt with as an ac- 
cessary ?” 

“ Pooh !” he exclaimed, “ one never hears of seconds being 
charged.” 

“You will take baby with you, I presume ?” 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


433 


He answered no. During his absence a cousin of his had lost her 
husband, a colpnel in India. She had arrived in England with two 
grown-up daughters, and was so poor that she had asked Wilfrid to 
help her. He had arranged that she and the girls should occupy 
his seat in the North and take charge of his child. This in fact 
had been settled, and Mrs. Conway and her daughters were now in- 
stalled at Sherburne Abbey. On hearing this it instantly suggested 
itself to me that Mrs. Conway would provide Laura with the very 
home that she needed until we heard from Mr. Jennings. Wilfrid 
of course acquiesced; he was delighted; he loved Laura as a sister, 
and his little one would be doubly guarded while she was with it. 
So here was a prompt and happy end to what had really threatened 
to prove a source of perplexity, and indeed in some senses a real dif- 
ficulty. 

And now to end this narrative. A fortnight later Wilfrid went 
abroad to travel, as he said, in Italy and the south of France, and with 
him proceeded Mr. Muffin. During that fortnight Laura and I were 
frequently with him, but it was only on the day previous to his de- 
parture that he mentioned his wife’s name. In a careless , voice and 
off-hand manner he asked if we had heard of her, but neither of 
us could give him any news. We had not chosen to learn by call- 
ing if she continued at the hotel to which she had gone on her ar- 
rival. She had not written to her sister, nor had she communicated 
with Wilfrid’s solicitors. However, about a fortnight after I had 
returned to London from the North, whither I had escorted Laura, 
there came a letter to my lodgings addressed to my sweetheart. I 
guessed the handwriting to be Lady Monson’s. I forwarded it to 
Laura, who returned it to me. It was a cold intimation of her 
ladyship’s intention to sail in such and such a vessel to Melbourne 
on the Monday following, so that when Tread the missive she had 
been four days on her way. For my part, I was heartily glad to 
know that she was out of England. 

Soon after my arrival I sent a description of the volcanic island 
and the galleon on top of it to a naval publication of the peridd. 
It was widely reprinted, and excited much attention, and brought 
me many letters. But for that article I believe I should have heard 
no more of Dowling and Head. It chanced, however, that my ac- 
count of the island was republished in a West Indian journal, and I 
think it was about five months after my return to this country that 
I received a letter from the master of a vessel dated at the Havanas, 
and addressed to me at the office of the journal in which my nar- 
28 


434 


AN OCEAN TKAGEDY. 


rative bad been published. This man, it seems, having sighted the 
rock about three weeks after we had got away from it in the Star^ 
of Peace^ hauled in cJose to have a good look at an uncharted spot 
that was full of the deadliest menace to vessels, and observed signals 
being made to him from what he was afterwards informed was the 
hull of a fossilized ship. He sent a boat and brought off two men, 
who, it is needless to say, were Dowling and Head. They very 
frankly related their story, told the master of the vessel how they 
were survivors of the schooner-yacht Bride, and how they had de- 
clined to leave the island because of their expectation of meeting 
with treasure aboard that strange old ship of weeds and shells. Day 
after day they had toiled in her, but to no purpose. They broke 
into the piles of shells, but found nothing save rottenness within, 
remains of what might have been cargo, but of a character utterly 
indistinguishable. There was not a ha’porth of money or treasure, 
so there was an end of the poor fellows’ princely dreams. They 
were received on board and worked their passage to Rio, where they 
left the ship, which then proceeded to the Havanas. 

There can be little doubt that shortly after this the volcanic rock 
subsided and vanished off the surface of the sea, after the usual 
manner of these desperate creations. The editor of the naval jour- 
nal received several copies of logs kept by ships which had traversed 
the part of the ocean where the island ha-d sprung up, and it was 
gathered, after a careful comparison of these memoranda, that the 
rock must have disappeared very shortly after Dowling and Head 
had been taken off it, for the log-book of a vessel named the Martha 
Robinson showed that three days later she had passed over the exact 
spot where the island had stood and all was clear sea. 

My time of waiting for the hand of Laura was not to prove so 
long as I had feared. Very unexpectedly one morning I received 
a letter from my darling from the Abbey. Her father had arrived 
on the preceding day. She could scarcely believe her ears when a 
servant came to tell her that Mr. Jennings had called and was wait- 
ing to see her. Of course he had not received her letter. He had 
taken it into his head to visit England, both his daughters being 
there, mainly with the intention of taking Laura back with him 
when he returned. He was almost broken-hearted, so Laura wrote, 
when she told him about Lady Monson. However, he was in Eng- 
land, and after waiting a few days so as to give him time to recover 
the dreadful shock caused him by the news of his daughter’s be- 
havior, I went down to Westmoreland, was introduced to the old 


AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. 


436 


gentleman, and found him a bluff, hearty, plain-spoken man. He 
told me he could settle twenty thousand pounds upon his child, and 
seemed very well satisfied to hear that I was not without a pretty 
little income of my own. He approached the subject of insanity 
with a bluntness that somewhat disconcerted me. I assured him 
that so far as I could possibly imagine I was not mad, thal* my 
cousin’s craziness came from a source which did not concern me in 
the least degree. He was pleased afterwards to tell Laura that he 
could see by my eye that my intellect was as sound as a bell ; an 
observation upon which I thought I had some right to compliment 
myself, for to he suspected of being “ wanting ” is often to invol- 
untarily and unconsciously look so; and I must say that while Mr. 
Jennings and I talked about Wilfrid’s craziness, and where it came 
from, he regarded me with a keenness that was at times not a little 
embarrassing. 

Laura and I had been married two years when we heard of Lady 
Monson. Mr. Jennings had returned to Australia, but in one or two 
letters we had received from him he never mentioned Henrietta’s 
name. Then came a missive in deep mourning. Lady Monson was 
dead ! She had been received into the Roman Catholic Church — so 
wrote the father in a letter whose every sentence seemed as though 
he wrote with a pen dipped in his tears. She had, apparently, giv- 
en up all thoughts of this world, and devoted her days and nights 
to ministering to the poor. One day she returned to her home 
looking ill ; two nights later she was delirious. She broke from the 
grasp of her attendants, and marched with stately step, singing in her 
rich contralto voice as she went, to an upper chamber that had been 
Laura’s bedroom, where, planting herself before a mirror, she fell to 
brushing her rich and beautiful hair, singing all the while, till on a 
sudden she fell with a shriek to the ground, was carried back to her 
bed, and two hours later lay a corpse ! 


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BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 


A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD. A Novel, 
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By CAPT. CHARLES KING 


A WAR-TIME WOOING. Illustrated by E. F. Zogbaum. 
pp. iv., 196. Post 8 VO, Cloth, $1 00. 

BETWEEN THE LINES. A Story of the War. Illustrated 
by Gilbert Gaul. pp. iv., 312. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 25. 

In all of Captain King’s stories the author holds to lofty ideals of man- 
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courage, and self-control. — Literary World., Boston. 

The vivacity and charm which signally distinguish Captain King’s 
pen. ... He occupies a position in American literature entirely his own. 

. . . His is the literature of honest sentiment, pure and tender. . . . His 
heroes and his charming heroines are the product of the army, and it is 
pleasant to meet, even in this intangible way, women who can break their 
hearts and men who would die rather than sacrifice their honor. — N. Y. 
Press. 

A romance by Captain King is always a pleasure, because he has so 
complete a mastery of the subjects with which he deals. . . . Captain 
King has few rivals in his domain. . . . The general tone of Captain King’s 
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Captain King is a delightful story-teller. — Washington Post. 

Ill the delineation of war scenes Captain King’s style is crisp and vig- 
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vor. — Boston Comynonwealth. 

Captain King is almost without a rival in the field he has chosen. . . . 
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women . — Pittshuygh Bulletin. 

It is good to think that there is at least one man who believes that all 
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CHITA: 

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Lafcadio Hearn’s exquisite story. ... A tale full of poetry and 
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ues. — N. Y. Tribune. 

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known. All the splendor of her skies and the terrors of her seas 
make to themselves a language. So living a book has scarcely been 
given to our generation. — Boston Transcript. 

Lafcadio Hearn has made a name for himself with his little story, 
“Chita.” ... It is a very simple tale, and yet Mr. Hearn has made a 
gem of it. — San Francisco Argonaut. 


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SUMMER HOLIDAYS. 


Travelling Notes in Europe. By Theodoee Child, pp. vi., 
304. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. 


A delightful book of notes of European travel. . . . Mr. Child is 
an art critic, and takes us into the picture-galleries, hut we never 
get any large and painful doses of art information from this skilful 
and discriminating gil.de. There is not a page of his book that ap- 
proaches to dull reading. — N. Y. Sun. 

Mr. Child is a shrewd observer and writer of an engaging style. 
He interests the reader with abundant information, and pleases him 
by his lively manner in communicating it. — Hartford Courant. 

The writer wields an easy, graceful pen, and makes his book one 
that will gild with its enchantment many an hour. — Christian at 
Work, N. Y. 

Mr. Child is always a brilliant and in^resting writer, and his 
sketches of travels are invariably picturesque and animated in style. 
— Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston. 

Mr. Child is a very agreeable travelling companion, and his choice 
of places for a summer ramble is excellent. . . . The French chap- 
ters — on Limoges, Reims, Aix-les-Bains, and especially the voyage 
on French rivers — are abundant in novelty and odd bits of interest, 
as well as in beauty of scene and sympathy. — Nation, N. Y. 

A book which is so far out of the routine of ordinary works of 
travel that it will be a treat to readers who do their travelling in slip- 
pers by the evening lamp. . . . The author gives glimpses of many 
by-ways which the ordinary tourist never dreams of. He is, more- 
over, a philosopher, something of a poet, a good judge of art and 
architecture, and, finally, a cosmopolitan with catholic tastes, but 
with an eager curiosity which no amount of sight-seeing can ever 
sate. — San Francisco Chronicle. 

A very pleasant volume of sketches by an accomplished traveller, 
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information without wearisome detail. — Providence Journal. 

Mr. Child’s notes have not only the charm of a practised and 
graceful pen, but that of unusual originality of theme to recom- 
mend them. — New Haven Palladium. 

Mr. Child is right in assuming that there are many people who 
adopt that safe mode of travel, in an arm-chair by the fireside. To 
those who so travel, not less than to experienced wanderers, these 
sketches of the Danube and Constantinople, of Naples, Milan, Vero- 
na, Venice, Florence, Frankfort, Cassel, Brunswick, Munich, Limo- 
ges, Reims, Aix-les-Bains, and Holland, will be read with lively 
pleasure. — Brooklyn Times. 


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THE ODD NUMBER. 

Thirteen Tales by Guy de Maupassant. The Translation by 
Jonathan Sturges. An Introduction by Henry James. 
pp. xviii., 226. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamejital, $1 00. 


The tales included in “The Odd Number” are little master- 
pieces, and done into very clear, sweet, simple English. — William 
Dean Howells. 

There is a charming individuality in each of these fascinating 
little tales; something elusive and subtle in every one, something 
quaint or surprising, which catches the fancy and gives a sense of 
satisfaction like that felt when one discovers a rare flower in an 
unexpected place. I predict that “ The Odd Number ” will soon be 
found lying in the corner of the sofa or on the table in the drawing- 
rooms of cultivated women everywhere. — Margaret E. Sangster. 

Masterpieces. . . . Nothing can exceed the masculine firmness, the 
quiet force, of his own style, in which every phrase is a close 
sequence, every epithet a paying piece, and the ground is completely 
cleared of the vague, the ready-made, and the second-best. Less 
than any one to-day does he beat the air, more than any one does 
he hit out from the shoulder. , . . He came into the literary world, 
as he has himself related, under the protection of the great Flaubert. 
This was but a dozen years ago — for Guy de Maupassant belongs, 
among the distinguished Frenchmen of his period, to the new gen- 
eration. — Henry James. 

As a rule I do not take kindly to translations. They are apt to 
resemble the originals as canned or dried fruits resemble fresh. 
But Mr, Sturges has preserved flavor and juices in this collection. 
Each story is a delight. Some are piquant, some pathetic — all are 
fascinating. — Marion Harland. 

What pure and powerful outlines, what lightness of stroke, and 
what precision; what relentless truth, and yet what charm! “The 
Beggar,” “La M6re Sauvage,” “The Wolf,” grim as if they had 
dropped out of the mediaeval mind; “The Necklace,” with its ap- 
plied pessimism; the tremendous Are and strength of “A Coward”; 
the miracle of splendor in “ Moonlight”; the absolute perfection of 
a short story in “Happiness” — how various the view, how daring 
the touch! What freshness, what invention, and what wit ! They 
are beautiful and heart-breaking little masterpieces, and “ The Odd 
Number ” makes one feel that Guy de Maupassant lays his hand 
upon the sceptre which only Daudet holds. — Harriet Prescott 
Sfofford. 


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